New! Sign up for our free email newsletter.
Reference Terms
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stellar nucleosynthesis

Stellar nucleosynthesis is the collective term for the nuclear reactions taking place in stars to build the nuclei of the heavier elements. The processes involved began to be understood early in the twentieth century, when it was first realised that the energy released from nuclear reactions accounted for the longevity of the Sun as a source of heat and light. The prime energy producer in the sun is the fusion of hydrogen to helium, which occurs at a minimum temperature of 3 million kelvin.

Related Stories
 


Space & Time News

November 3, 2025

A team of astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to create the first 3D atmospheric map of an exoplanet. The fiery WASP-18b, a massive “ultra-hot Jupiter,” revealed striking temperature contrasts, including regions so hot they destroy ...
Scientists have developed a groundbreaking tool called Effort.jl that lets them simulate the structure of the universe using just a laptop. The team created a system that dramatically speeds up how researchers study cosmic data, turning what once ...
Tohoku University researchers have found a way to make quantum sensors more sensitive by connecting superconducting qubits in optimized network patterns. These networks amplify faint signals possibly left by dark matter. The approach outperformed ...
Two Sydney PhD students have pulled off a remarkable space science feat from Earth—using AI-driven software to correct image blurring in NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Their innovation, called AMIGO, fixed distortions in the telescope’s ...
A UCLA-led team has achieved the sharpest-ever view of a distant star’s disk using a groundbreaking photonic lantern device on a single telescope—no multi-telescope array required. This technology splits incoming starlight into multiple ...
Researchers propose that hydrogen gas from the early Universe emitted detectable radio waves influenced by dark matter. Studying these signals, especially from the Moon’s radio-quiet environment, could reveal how dark matter clumped together ...
3I/ATLAS, a mysterious interstellar object racing toward the Sun, is baffling scientists with its speed and origin. Some researchers suggest it could even be alien-made, drawing comparisons to probes ...
High above the Sun’s blazing equator lie its mysterious poles, the birthplace of fast solar winds and the heart of its magnetic heartbeat. For decades, scientists have struggled to see these regions, hidden from Earth’s orbit. With the upcoming ...
A colossal northern asteroid impact billions of years ago likely shaped the Moon’s south polar region and explains its uneven terrain. Researchers found that the South Pole-Aitken Basin formed from a glancing northern strike, revealing deep ...
ESA’s Mars orbiters have observed comet 3I/ATLAS, only the third interstellar comet ever discovered. The faint, distant object revealed a glowing coma as it was heated by the Sun. Researchers are still studying the data to understand its makeup ...
Mars may look calm, but new research reveals it’s a world of fierce winds and swirling dust devils racing at hurricane-like speeds. Using deep learning on thousands of satellite images from European orbiters, scientists have discovered that ...
ESA has inaugurated a powerful new 35-meter deep space antenna at its New Norcia site in Western Australia, marking a major boost to Europe’s ability to communicate with spacecraft exploring the ...

Latest Headlines

updated 12:56 pm ET