The real story is that the Hoyle
state has finally been calculated and we can expect a much tightened up
understanding of the sequence of nuclear fusion producing our universe. The rest of it is a bit of a stretch. The only guess was that it existed and that
appears answered now the only way that was plausible. A good news day for theorists.
We are slowly policing up a lot
of atomic theory now and with the like of the Rossi Focardi reactor, this area
may again become hot.
Particle theory we can ignore for
now.
Fundamental question on how life started solved
by Staff Writers
For carbon, the basis of life, to be able to form in the stars, a certain state of the carbon nucleus plays an essential role. In cooperation with US colleagues, physicists from the
"Attempts to calculate the Hoyle state have been unsuccessful
since 1954," said Professor Dr. Ulf-G. Meissner (Helmholtz-Institut fur
Strahlen- und Kernphysik der Universitat Bonn
"But now, we have done it!" The Hoyle state is an energy-rich
form of the carbon nucleus. It is the mountain pass over which all roads from
one valley to the next lead: From the three nuclei of helium gas to
the much larger carbon nucleus. This fusion reaction takes place in the hot
interior of heavy stars. If the Hoyle state did not exist, only very little
carbon or other higher elements such as oxygen, nitrogen and iron could have
formed. Without this type of carbon nucleus, life probably also would not have
been possible.
The search for the "slave transmitter"
The Hoyle state had been verified by experiments as early as 1954, but calculating it always failed. For this form of carbon consists of only three, very loosely linked helium nuclei - more of a cloudy diffuse carbon nucleus. And it does not occur individually, only together with other forms of carbon. "This is as if you wanted to analyze a radio signal whose main transmitter and several slave transmitters are interfering with each other," explained Prof. Dr. Evgeny Epelbaum (
The main transmitter is the stable carbon nucleus from which humans -
among others - are made. "But we are interested in one of the unstable,
energy-rich carbon nuclei; so we have to separate the weaker radio transmitter
somehow from the dominant signal by means of a noise filter."
What made this possible was a new, improved calculating approach the
researchers used that allowed calculating the forces between several
nuclear particles more
precisely than ever. And in JUGENE, the supercomputer at Forschungszentrum
Julich, a suitable tool was found. It took JUGENE almost a week of calculating.
The results matched the experimental data so well that the researchers can be
certain that they have indeed calculated the Hoyle state.
More about how the Universe came into existence
"Now we can analyze this exciting and essential form of the carbon nucleus in every detail," explained Prof. Meissner. "We will determine how big it is, and what its structure is. And it also means that we can now take a very close look at the entire chain of how elements are formed."
In future, this may even allow answering philosophical questions using science.
For decades, the Hoyle state was a prime example for the theory that natural
constants must have precisely their experimentally determined values, and not
any different ones, since otherwise we would not be here to observe the
Universe (the anthropic principle).
"For the Hoyle state this means that it must have exactly the
amount of energy it has, or else, we would not exist," said Prof.
Meissner. "Now we can calculate whether - in a changed world with other
parameters - the Hoyle state would indeed have a different energy when
comparing the mass of three helium nuclei." If this is so, this would
confirm the anthropic principle.
The study was jointly conducted by the University of Bonn,
Ruhr-Universita
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