On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 9:01 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: Slight misunderstanding here. The Diproton doesn't exist. It falls apart > immediately into two protons. The only time you get D is when the > conversion of > a proton to a neutron just happens to occur during the very brief instant > in > time that the diproton exists. It's because this combination of events is > so > extremely unlikely that the half-life of the reaction is so large. >
Thanks for the correction. When the Wikipedia article talks about a ratio of 1:400 for pep to pp, is that the ratio of successful deuterium formation for each of these branches, or is it the ratio of deuterium formation for pep versus the very brief formation of diproton from two protons? Working backwards from your supernova argument, I think the answer must be the former, but I just wanted to verify this. In other words, is deuterium produced 400 times more slowly by the pep branch than by the pp branch? Also, when you mention "days" in connection with the D+p branch, I think you're referring to the duration that it dominates stellar evolution rather than, for example, the amount of time you would need in order to see it occur in significant amounts in a P&F cell? Eric
