Description:
Energy Production in Stars is part of the Astronomy 162: Stars, Galaxies, and Cosmology course offered by the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Tennessee. This section covers the mass-energy relation of special relativity; the curve of binding energy, and its implications for fusion and fission reactions, and stellar energy production; nuclear reactions, and their relation to the Coulomb barrier, and quantum mechanical tunneling; temperature and pressure in stars, including the kinetic theory of gases, ideal gas law, and the Gamow window for charged particle reactions; the proton-proton chain; the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) cycle; the triple-alpha process, mass-5 and mass-8 bottlenecks; advanced burning stages; stellar energy transport; and the solar neutrino problem.
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