The Hoyle state is produced through a “triple alpha process” inside stars. Two alpha particles fuse to form a beryllium atom, and then a third alpha quickly fuses with it, creating the Hoyle state. This primordial nuclear state marks the starting point for most of the elements necessary for life.
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From Simons Science News (find original story here)
Billions of years ago, all of Earth’s carbon erupted into existence inside distant, dying stars. At first, each atom’s nucleus arose in a swollen, squashed state with little chance of survival. For every 2,500 that immediately fizzled, only one shape-shifted into a stable form capable of supporting life.
That primordial, unstable nuclear state, called the Hoyle state, was discovered more than 50 years ago, but it has taken the rise of modern supercomputers and the development of new mathematical techniques to figure out just how the laws of physics cook it up. In work first detailed in May 2011 and further refined in a paper to be published this month in Physical Review Letters, a group of theoretical physicists in Germany and the United States applied the forces of physics to a computer-simulated set of subatomic particles to build the structure of the Hoyle state nucleus from scratch.
“It looks like a bent arm,” said Dean Lee, a professor of nuclear and particle physics at North Carolina State University and a study co-author.
Physicists say knowing the structure of the Hoyle state will help reveal how it gives rise to carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and other light elements that compose the complex molecules of living things. The synthesis of these elements enables the genesis of life, but it also drives the evolution of stars.
“The carbon-oxygen-nitrogen cycle is simply crucial for the formation of almost all the other elements, and for understanding how stars live and how stars decay and fade away,” said Morten Hjorth-Jensen, a professor of theoretical nuclear physics at the University of Oslo and Michigan State University, who was not involved in the research. “And, of course, without the Hoyle state we wouldn’t be here.”
The quest to unravel the Hoyle state started in 1954 with what the astrophysics writer Marcus Chown has called “the most outrageous prediction” ever made in science. The theoretical astrophysicist Fred Hoyle reasoned that his own existence meant that an unknown, exotic state of the carbon atom with about 7.65 million electron volts of extra energy must arise inside dying stars, even though no one had ever detected spectral emissions from such an atom.
“Hoyle postulated that this 7.65 MeV carbon had to exist in order for there to be life,” Hjorth-Jensen said. “Then, four or five years later, an experimental group in Caltech actually found this Hoyle state in emissions.”
Just as predicted, almost all the key elements of life descend from that fleeting form of carbon. When midsize stars like our sun run low on hydrogen to fuse into helium, their outer layers expand and redden, and their cores shrink. During this inner contraction, helium nuclei (also called alpha particles), each containing two protons and two neutrons, are thrust together so forcefully that they fuse, forming a four-proton, four-neutron atomic nucleus called beryllium-8. In the ten-thousandth of a trillionth of a second before the beryllium decays back into two alpha particles, a third alpha particle sometimes smacks into the beryllium, fusing with it to form an excited, plus-size carbon-12 nucleus: the Hoyle state. In addition to carbon’s usual six protons and six neutrons, this state packs an extra bundle of energy.
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16 Comments
Add CommentDoesn’t the unlikelihood individual particles willed themselves into the Hoyle state give support to serendipity and determinism?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCosmic and impressive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt sounds like cooking a soup on a cosmic scale. I wonder where the recipe comes from.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe: "Billions of years ago, all of Earth’s carbon erupted into existence inside distant, dying stars. At first, each atom’s nucleus arose in a swollen, squashed state with little chance of survival. For every 2,500 that immediately fizzled, only one shape-shifted into a stable form capable of supporting life."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs there any evidence for the claims?
While Sir Fred Hoyle is credited with “the most outrageous prediction” ever made in science," he also rejected the claim of the reigning paradigm for the origin of the universe:
"...[I]n a single big bang there are no targets at all, because the whole universe takes place in the explosion. There is nothing for the expanding universe to hit against and after sufficient expansion, the whole affair should go dead. However, we actually have a universe of continuing
activity instead of one that is uniform and inert."
[1984. The big bang under attack. SCIENCE DIGEST, p. 8]
What does all this mean for the status of the much-maligned anthropic principle? It seems to have been a reliable guide for Hoyle.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI like Fred Hoyle. His major contribution is the one described in the article. He also made a simple chart for aiming cannons for the artillery in WWII! It was extensively used.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, he also called archaeopterix a fake, believed that illness outbreaks were caused by pan-spermia descending to earth. Lots of other nonsense.
An excellent bio: "Conflict in the Cosmos" by Simon Mitton
This is yet another attempt ( by physical scientists), at physicalizing Life ( or Life - energy or bio- energy ). Physics wants every phenomena , physical or otherwise, to be covered under the umbrella of material sciences. They want to establish that physical science is the most fundamental science and that everything can be explained on the paradigms of physics. It's just the vanity of physics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBio- science is definitely not material science . Material physicists in order to corner all research grants and funds, valiantly try every trick in the books to bring bio- science into the domain of material science. They try it with ultra super computers , new maths and then with elementary approximations, like engineers do routinely to deal with materials; and, by invoking frequently Fred Hoyle ,who himself believed in a different non- material origin of life .
( Hoyle believed that Life on earth is an off- shoot of cosmic life arrived on earth through the process of panspermia and all that) .
Life - energy,like light ( electromagnetic energy ) ,manifests in the presence of matter.
Light manifests in matter by it's interaction through reflection, refraction, absorption, interference,diffraction, polarization and other means. Otherwise light by itself is invisible to our senses and instruments . But that does't make us to conclude that light is matter itself or emerging from matter or that it's organized from matter.
Similarly , Life- energy too manifests (to our senses), through its interaction with matter. It's foolish to conclude from that , that life is an emergent phenomena , that life can originate from certain physical-chemical inter actions out of materials.
To think like that would be like thinking that light is produced by our eyes ( as it was thought , once upon a pre- scientific era ).
The fact that while nature ,so prolifically and effortlessly produce life in all its infinite variety, starting at the level of viruses & microbes to multicellular organisms like humans for example, we could not create even a single - celled organism in the lab , from purely raw inorganic chemicals or from any non-living or non- life entities, should be proof enough that life is a radically different type of energy than matter- energy and the paradigms we employ for understanding matter- energies are not going to help us understand life- energy which needs an entirely different paradigm to describe and to explain it , than that of Electromagnetic energy ,or of gravitational energy .
We still don't know what other types of energies like dark energy , vacuum energy and, so on exist, all of which might be manifestations of some common source-energy or or source-entity which we have yet to decipher . At the moment they remain to us in transcendental domains .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe need not feel worried about it. After all, our science is only about 500 years old , and though we have reached thus far with it, there is a lot more about nature that we have to know. The more we unravel the mysteries of nature the more unknown regions open out in front of us. But that's OK . It is as it should be only.
The strength of Science lies not in answering questions but in questioning the answers. A bunch of questions are generated from each of the answers .it's human hubris to think that we have found explanations for almost all major questions or that a day will come when we can find answers and explanations for everything and for every event in the cosmos .
Bio-energies are to be understood through novel paradigms . We have to eschew the paradigms of material science . Bio- energies are continuous and cannot be digitalized. Bio- energies are qualities of nature and cannot be quantified, hence not amenable to mathematical modeling. We have reached some distance by quantizing another type of continuous energy-stream like Electromagnetic energy and, we tend to try the same trick with bio- energies without success.
Bio- scientists need to effect a clean break from physical sciences and invent new paradigms suited to non- matter based continuous self-organizing energies ( not subject to entropy ), which is the characteristic feature of bio- energy . Of course, initially they will suffer from drying up of research funds which are being conducted to them through physical sciences. But, without getting put off by such treatment from fund allocators or funders, bio- scientists should independently forge ahead creating their own paradigms and thinking in non- physical ways observing directly from natural life-forms to study life instead of wasting our time in trying to produce life from chemicals . We have tried that enough. Now it's high time to try something else. ( continued ) .
Bio- energies could be derived from processing "information" which is the basis and constituent energy stream of even matter .Matter is not made up of quarks or atoms or strings , but matter is the product of "information" as recently found out by scientists in cambridge university.Both, bio- energies and matter, are derived from processed "information" which has the quality of random spontaneity and the characteristic self- organizing quality . "Information" is a more fundamental entity and matter and bio- energies are emergent phenomena, The basic source for both matter and bio- energies being continuously streaming "information", which is the underlying building stream that nourishes both, ( not " building block" which term invoke discreteness.).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdadster, that sounds a lot like the disingenuous "vital essence" theory supported by the likes of Berzelius and other misguided "souls." For instance Berzelius (b.1779), the famous Swedish chemist, believed a "vital force" was necessary for synthesizing organic molecules, until one of his own student, Wolrlez, synthesized urea molecules sans kidneys!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's what the physical scientists arebfond of quoting. Who discredited,élan vitae theory ? The physical scientists who did not wantnto consider a third energy type after electrical energy and gravitational energy. They haven't yet been able to quantize continuously present gravitational energy . But could determine a unit of measurement for it and measure it through it's interaction with mass . That enabled them to mathematically model it .but they were stuck when they tried to discretize it by conceiving gravitons like photons . Due to the interactions of electromagnetis with mass again, they could quantize Electromagnetic energy too .but they couldntnwish away the continuous nature
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this( waviness ) of EM energy. Hence forcingnthem to accept duality of EM that propagated as " wavicles" .
Just because , once upon a time some theory was abandoned does not disprove it's validity. Cosmological constant proposed by Einstein was discredited by Einstein himself , but recently revived and validated again.
Observation and experimental proof is the ultimate arbitrator combined with the application of Occam's razor and the imperative of " falsifiability" of a theory.
The phenomena of "life" and " consciousness" can no more be ignored or
relegated to the domain of metaphysics as physicists of yore used to do.quantum science has come up with the phenomena of "quantum
entanglements" and "advanced waves ", which blatantly violate the two sacred principles of physics viz, the impossibility of " action at a distance" and the impossibility of communicating at speeds exceeding that of light.
Hence one by one the edifices of physics are crumbling in the light of "observations".
Physicists managed to bring major portion of chemistry under their wing . They tried to bring in bio- sciences too under their umbrella. Bio- scientists , impressed by the success of material physics played along with physicists hoping to harness life- energy ( or, bio- energy ) but in vain., for various reasons some of which were highlighted earlier ; reasons such as indivisibility of bio- energy and the impossibility of discretizing making it impossible to assign any meaningful "units of measurement" to measure comprehensively bio- energy which is not all muscular energies but embraces mental energies too.
.( continued ) .
In continuation to entry at 9 above,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAdded to this , the fact that at the most fundamental Level it is impossible to have any objective observation , in the classical sense forcing even hard core main stream physicists to accept the impossibility of keeping away the "intentions of the Observer " out of observations .that is to say reality is tainted by mind or created in the mind which gets observed ! This made it impossible for physicists to disregard the phenomena of "mind" and " consciousness ". Therefore it is time to revive the once discredited bio- forces or bio- energy making the physicists who initially discredited mind to eat their words . But, to the credit of physicists they are trying valiantly to bring in "mind" but they can't think of a way of doing it without discretizing mind. Hence the block to progress , the physical way. It's now up to the bio- scientists to seek out fresh paradigm and find a way out of the impasse by striking out on their own by direct observation of nature and not through mathematical modeling.
Dadster, I cannot add to your vision. Hoyle might have been incorrect on one thing, but this is not one of them. It opens some interesting doors and considering that two months ago it was on the cover that Quarks have parts, we have big ones to think that there is not more than smoke and mirrors running the magic act.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would make sense if we could tap into natural energy versus our continuous need to burn to earn mentality. I think Hoyle would love this as redemption.
Good Ol' Fred; Still attracting the Nut-Cases!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoyle had big bang wrong with steady state. Hubble proved that from our perspective it is probably a bang that brought us in and with the findings and behavior of dark matter we will go with as a wimp with nothing left to glimpse. But, we still only really know 2 to 4% of what surrounds us. I wouldn't dis Hoyle quite yet. They did that to Benoit Mandelbrot and yet his concept of fractals keeps coming back as seen in two issues of SA where it was discussed that quarks have parts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am a firm believer of using both eyes often and other senses of vision we barely notice and keeping the two orifices that are singularities as quiet as possible. For fun the book by Lee Smolin called 'Life in the Cosmos' just about nailed fractals but Lee wimped out just like I think he did recently by declaring there may be absolute time. Come on Lee, you were the one who tried to describe Loop Quantum Gravity so very well and tore a good one into the group thought of string theory neo-nazis. It helped me immensely in putting ST into a more analog state which with fractals and Escher type space removes the paradoxes of infinities.
Again Fred Doyle was a genius, but even Republicans have scientist that know that rape is rape and you cannot catch aids from tears. Open eyes, use ears, think deeply and don't dis until you have proof of what the other 96 to 98% of our universe is.
To the atheist, I would take the above advice twice. It is way too soon (only 400 years so far) since Science and Religion had their schism while both searching for truth.
Comon, Dadster.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisinitially I thought you were a disgruntled Bio. major that lost out on a grant to a physics major. But now I see that You just dump on physics but then you spout that vital essence is the answer!
Why not take some of your own advice:
'Observation and experimental proof is the ultimate arbitrator combined with the application of Occam's razor and the imperative of " falsifiability" of a theory.'
Until you do, you will continue to have a very poor understanding of Physics and of Science in general.
ed