Why can stars do better than the big bang? ...During the big bang, there were only a few minutes when nuclei could form. Very rare processes, or slow ones, played little role. A case in point is the key process from which the sun derives its energy. In this reaction, two protons collide to produce a deuterium nucleus, a neutrino, and a positron. ...This reaction belongs to the family of weak interactions. ...It remains... a remarkable-and for humanity, remarkably fortunate-circumstance that the central reaction that drives the sun is so rare. It is only this extraordinary rarity that allows the average proton in the sun to last so long, billions of years, even though it is colliding with other protons millions of times a second. ...an entertaining example of Treiman's theorem. (Frank Wilczek)

Why can stars do better than the big bang? ...During the big bang, there were only a few minutes when nuclei could form. Very rare processes, or slow ones, played little role. A case in point is the key process from which the sun derives its energy. In this reaction, two protons collide to produce a deuterium nucleus, a neutrino, and a positron. ...This reaction belongs to the family of weak interactions. ...It remains... a remarkable-and for humanity, remarkably fortunate-circumstance that the central reaction that drives the sun is so rare. It is only this extraordinary rarity that allows the average proton in the sun to last so long, billions of years, even though it is colliding with other protons millions of times a second. ...an entertaining example of Treiman's theorem.

Frank Wilczek

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average bang big case central energy entertaining example extraordinary family few form humanity key last nucleus ones point process produce rare rarity reaction role second slow sun theorem times remains years positron neutrino minutes proton colliding deuterium stars

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