William Alfred Fowler

There'd be almost no carbon in the universe.

He went and talked to a guy named William Fowler, I think at Caltech at the time.

Was barely able to convince him to actually run some experiments to look for this, because Fowler and others found this argument to be absurd.

But they ran the experiment.

Uh, so without this specific resonance level, uh, the universe would contain relatively few carbon atoms.

Uh, and in 1953, this specific resonance that had been previously predicted by Fred Hoyle was discovered by William Fowler, uh, precisely where Hoyle had predicted it would be.

And this special carbon resonance, uh, known as the Hoyle state, which corresponds to the energy levels of the combined beryllium-8 nucleus and helium-4 nucleus, renders the otherwise improbable process of carbon-12 formation feasible and efficient in the high-temperature environments of stellar cores.

And this delicate balance of energy levels is a remarkable aspect of nuclear astrophysics that allows for the creation of the elements necessary for life.

Um, did he satisfy his own research questions in the end, according to what you know?

Yeah.

As I said, the, um, his, his predicted, um, [lip smacks] a carbon resonance was actually, um, documented, uh, discovered, uh, elucidated by William Fowler precisely where Hoyle had predicted that it would be.

Yeah.