"Energy Production in Stars." In: Physical Review, American Physical Society.

Hans Bethe

Edité par New York, 1939

A propos de cet article

"Energy Production in Stars." In: Physical Review, American Physical Society, vol 55 number 1, 1 January 1939, pp 1-112. Original wrappers. The Bethe appears as a one-page letter on page 104. This is the first appearance of a longer paper that would appear in the Physical Review two months later in March.

The spine has been completely replaced with a beautifully-crafted replacement very truly close in appearance to the original. There is an old rubberstamp from previous owner at front cover bottom right. NEAR-FINE copy. [++] Bethe is one of the foremost figures in American science for this century, and for his many accomplishments was awarded the following prizes: Nobel (the first time the award was given for astrophysics) 1967 ("for his contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, especially his discoveries concerning the energy production in stars"), Fermi 1961, Planck 1955, Draper 1948, Presidential Medal of Merit 1946, Cressey Morrison 1938, etc. It should also be noted that Bethe took his Ph.D. at Munich in 1928 at tender age of 22 ('though Fermi got his [else-where] at 21). See Lang and Gingerich "Source Book in Astrophysics, 1900-1975," 49, pp 320-338, for a superb treatment of this important paper.

"CNO cycle, sequence of thermonuclear reactions that provides most of the energy radiated by the hotter stars. It is only a minor source of energy for the Sun and does not operate at all in very cool stars. Four hydrogen nuclei are in effect converted into one helium nucleus, a fraction of the mass being released as energy (according to the law of mass energy equivalence, E = mc^2). The German American physicist Hans Bethe, in 1938, first described the process." Britannica.

"In his paper The 'Energy Production in Stars', Bethe independently discovered the CNO cycle and computed its properties. As he told himself, to obtain a steeper energy dependence he had to find a reaction involving a higher potential barrier, i.e., a nucleus with a higher charge: 'So I went systematically through the Periodic Table but everything gave nonsense because whatever atom I used, lithium, beryllium, etc., would be destroyed in the reaction, and there was very little of these substances anyway, as we know from the abundances both on earth and in the stars. So these elements could not possibly give the energy production for the length of time that the universe had been functioning. Finally I got to carbon, and as you all know, in the case of carbon the reaction works out beautifully.' Bethe found that for this process the energy production rises very steeply with temperature, like T^17, for temperature around 20x10^6 K and he concluded that, while direct fusion was important in the sun, the CNO cycle provided the energy in the hotter stars. Together the two processes were sufficient to explain the observed energy yield of the stars on the main sequence." Siegmund Brandt, Harvest of a Century, Discoveries of Modern Physics in 100 Episodes, (Why the Stars Shine), pg. 262.

"The so-called Bethe Bible summarized what was known and understood in nuclear structure and nuclear reactions, and his paper on the energy generation in stars [the first appearance of which is offered here] solved that problem and created the field of nuclear astrophysics."--Complete DSB online 714,3.

N° de réf. du vendeur ABE-1771867995869

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: "Energy Production in Stars." In: Physical Review, American Physical Society.
• Éditeur: New York
• Date de parution: 1939
• Reliure: Couverture souple
• État de l'article: Bon
• Dimensions: 8 L x 11 H x 1 P (en pouces) 8 pouces de largeur par 11 pouces de hauteur par 1 pouces de profondeur
• Poids: 15 onces
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • Astrophysics