Wiescher Michael
Acta Hist Leopoldina. 2014(63):117-44.
The Carbon- or Bethe-Weizsäcker Cycle plays an important role in astrophysics as one of the most important energy sources for a quiescent and explosive hydrogen burning in stars. This paper presents the historical background and the contributions by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Hans Bethe who provided the first predictions of the cycle. Furthermore, it discussed the experimental verification of the predicted process in the following decades. Also discussed is the extension of the initial Carbon cycle to the CNO multi-cycles and the hot CNO cycles which followed from the detailed experimental studies of the associated nuclear reactions. Finally discussed is the impact of the experimental and theoretical results on our present understanding of hydrogen burning in different stellar environments and on our understanding of the chemical evolution of our universe.
碳循环或贝蒂-魏茨泽克循环在天体物理学中扮演着重要角色，是恒星中氢的静态燃烧和爆发性燃烧的最重要能量来源之一。本文介绍了其历史背景以及卡尔·弗里德里希·冯·魏茨泽克和汉斯·贝蒂所做的贡献，他们首次对该循环做出了预测。此外，本文还讨论了接下来几十年对该预测过程的实验验证。同时讨论的还有最初的碳循环扩展到CNO多循环以及热CNO循环，这些都是对相关核反应进行详细实验研究的结果。最后讨论的是实验和理论结果对我们目前对不同恒星环境中氢燃烧的理解以及对宇宙化学演化理解的影响。
