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Concept

Hoyle state

The image depicts an atom with six electrons orbiting around a central nucleus, symbolizing the Hoyle state, a concept predicted by Fred Hoyle in 1953 to explain the stability of carbon-12 nuclei at an excited energy level of 7.654 MeV above the ground state.

An excited energy level of the carbon-12 nucleus, 7.654 MeV above the ground state. Predicted by Fred Hoyle in 1953 on the grounds that without it, stars could not fuse enough helium into carbon to populate the universe with the carbon we observe. Confirmed at Caltech in 1957. The state is famously fine-tuned: small changes in the underlying strong force would shift it enough to suppress carbon production by orders of magnitude.

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