Ernest Lawrence a scrap of a paper napkin. While sitting in the library one evening in 1929, Lawrence glanced over a journal article by Rolf Widerøe, and was intrigued by one of the diagrams. This depicted a device that produced high-energy particles by means of a succession of small "pushes". The device depicted was laid out in a straight line using increasingly longer electrodes. At the time, physicists were beginning to explore the atomic nucleus. In 1919, the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford had fired alpha particles into nitrogen and had succeeded in knocking protons out of some of the nuclei. But
Triple-alpha process multiverse on account of the lack of independent evidence. Triple-alpha process The triple-alpha process is a set of nuclear fusion reactions by which three helium-4 nuclei (alpha particles) are transformed into carbon. Helium accumulates in the core of stars as a result of the proton–proton chain reaction and the carbon–nitrogen–oxygen cycle. Further nuclear fusion reactions of helium with hydrogen or another alpha particle produce lithium-5 and beryllium-8 respectively. Both products are highly unstable and decay, almost instantly, back into smaller nuclei, unless a third alpha particle fuses with a beryllium before that time to produce a stable carbon-12 nucleus. When