Talk:CNO cycle

early discussion before TOC

"The CNO cycle may also be the dominant source of nitrogen and oxygen production"

Er, how? It doesn't create a net increase in the number of N or O nuclei. -- Bth

Maybe what is meant is that once there is carbon in the star, there will also be nitrogene and oxgene in a comparable amount. If there is no other direct synthesis for oxygene and nitrogene, then most of these two elements can come from aborted CNO cyles. andy 22:32, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There is an equilibrium concentration N and O available in stars. When stars cool down, this can form N2 and O2. In heavier stars, when hydrogen/helium is depleted CNO starts reacting with other CNO molecules to form silicium (and slightly heavier components).

If the protons run out, you've still got a lot of CNO...Sikkema 14:23, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

energy notation

Is it a convention to write anenergy yield, so the liberation of energy, in the positive form ? This is contrary to chemical convention. Sikkema 14:23, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, at least the same notation is used as in chemistry from thermodynamics. Nuclear reactions that release energy are exothermic and nuclear reactions that require energy are endothermic. So these are listed as positive energies because energy is released in these reactions. While not being a chemist, I assume the same applies there as well. DAID (talk) 04:58, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

HELP!!! :S

Hi i have a little question that you may just be able to help me with well here it goes... What type of radioactive particle was emitted by 13/7N and 15/7N? your help is much appriciated thank you

- 13N-> beta+ + 13C (no gamma) 15N stable, abundance 0.366%

Reference to the Bethe paper

The link below point to the paper of Hans Bethe in which he introduces the CNO cycle.

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v55/i5/p434_1

Bethe-Weizsäcker process

The german wiki calls it Bethe-Weizsäcker process is this also a name for it?--Stone 11:27, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

The article has since been changed to reflect this, but my feeling is the CN cycle (or CNO-I) is that cycle, and the rest are not. Maybe Bethe filled out the rest in a later paper, but I think Weizsäcker only discusses the CN cycle in his paper. I am presently checking this point, and will consider edits if it's only the CN cycle which is called this. DAID (talk) 05:00, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Initial synthesis of C, N & O

Out of interest, can anyone provide more information on where the elements in the CNO cycle come from? There doesn't appear to be any mechanism given in this article on how they're initially generated, and they aren't featured in the p-p chain. Do they then come from the triple alpha process? Thanks in advance --Xanthine 21:35, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at the pages under "See also" -> Proton-proton chain turns H into He, Triple-alpha process turns He into C, the CNO cycle turns C and H into N, N and H into O and O and H into C and He.

    — SkyLined (talk) 13:41, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

High incidence of 7N14

Is the incidence of 7N14 as an intermediate element in the CNO-1 Nuclear synthesis process supposed to explain the high constituency of 7N14 in the earth's crust makeup? In the CNO formula, it's only an intermediary element and therefor does not increase in constituency. However, a discussion of the process implies an increase in 7N14 to occur as a result of the operation of the process to a condition of "equilibrium". If the process stopped after the 2nd hydrogen addition, we would then be left with a 7N14 atom. Is that what they are talking about.WFPM (talk) 18:22, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Isotope Notation

Why are the isotopes of C, O, N in equations not given with mass number? This is most unhelpful as it is now. Asgrrr (talk) 08:25, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Changed the CNO-I passage to show mass numbers. It may not be as visually pleasing, but this is the information that needs to be shown. If physiformulae can't do that then it needs to be discarded. Asgrrr (talk) 13:51, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Please do not make incorrect changes; the notation you used (mass-number bottom-left) is not a scientific notation that I am aware of. Please invest some time into understanding how the templates are used to display elements and how the scientific notations for the elements and their isotopes work. Besides, the formulas that you replaced already contained the mass numbers (top-left of the element symbol), so I do not understand what the problem is you're trying to solve. I've undone your edits.     — SkyLined (talk) 13:40, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Star mass bounds

"The presence of the heavier elements carbon, nitrogen and oxygen places an upward bound on the maximum size of massive stars to approximately 150 solar masses." This sounds like a very interesting statement. Could someone with the required knowledge add a sentence or two to expand on how the presence of CNO creates an upper bound? --Gargletheape (talk) 19:39, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

This statement really needs a reference. I can see how higher rates of energy generation can influence mass loss which can be related to the maximum mass of a star, but we need expansion, clarification, and a reference. I'm going to add a citation needed tag to this sentence for now. DAID (talk) 05:18, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Temperature threshold reference

Will the graph on this page suffice as a reference for the threshold temperature of the CNO cycle? Gizmoguy (talk) 19:11, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

The problem for using it as a reference is that these conclusions are model dependent, and while the site is hosted by a university, they don't appear to discuss the model or metallicities used to generate the plot. Of course, most models won't give significantly different results, but the content of CNO seed nuclei surely do influence it, and in fact, this is a point that needs clarification on the article. For these reasons I don't think it's good enough as a reference for information. However, it's a nice graph otherwise in terms of the type of graphics we should include, but we need it on wikimedia commons for the copyright issues, as well as to address the issues I note above. Coincidentally, I already asked my girlfriend tonight for a plot she generated which is similar to that one, which we will be hosting on the commons and posting on this and the pp pages shortly I hope. As far as a reference, we can probably find something in a textbook pretty easily, so I'll look into that eventually as well. Granted a textbook may or may not give us the model either, but textbooks are easily valid references. DAID (talk) 05:16, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Hot CNO and some needed additions

Tonight I added all the hot CNO reactions as well. I weighed creating a new page rather than adding to this one, but the hot CNO cycle also can use all of the cold CNO reactions, so I decided it made more sense to expand this article instead. But to start with, I just added the reactions and small blurbs for the new sections of Cold and Hot CNO. So some of the introduction material needs to be moved down to the Cold section when it does not apply to the Hot cycles. There is also not yet much information on the Hot CNO cycles. Overall I also think we need some more historical discussions, since originally only the CN cycle was known. A more firm discussion of limiting reactions enters us into the ideas of the later discovered CNO-II, and then CNO-III and CNO-IV networks. And once we get into discussion of limiting reactions, this can feed really nicely into the Hot CNO, where the limiting reactions are different! Happy editing. DAID (talk) 02:30, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Missing information: Neutrinos

"The neutrinos escape from the star carrying away some energy." This is classical weasel-wording. There should be a statement about the actual amount of energy carried away by Neutrinos. According to Scheffler & Elsässer, 1990, "Physik der Sterne und der Sonne" (physics of the stars and the Sun) it is about 1.7 MeV for CNO-I (I have added the reference there). The book does not give any information about the neutrino energies in the other beta decay reactions.--SiriusB (talk) 20:48, 24 August 2011 (UTC)