The Currents of Space - Scientific Accuracy

Scientific Accuracy

The idea of "currents of space" causing suns to explode is creative, but has been thoroughly discredited by modern-day science in the decades following the writing of The Currents of Space. There are indeed two types of stellar fusion, one involving the presence of carbon atoms as a kind of catalyst - and the other involving the proton-proton reaction. These processes are a simple result of the star's size and temperature, with only quite large stars using the carbon cycle (the CNO cycle). It is now believed that stars likely to have habitable planets cannot go nova, though they will become red giant stars at the very end of their lifetimes.

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