ABSTRACT
The sun radiates an enormous amount of energy, and we know it has radiated energy at essentially the same rate for billions of years. Only relatively recently has the mechanism for this energy production been understood. In 1929 d'Atkinson and Houtermans pointed out that nuclear reactions could take place at the extremely high temperatures existing in stellar interiors. About 10 years after this basic idea was suggested, Bethe and von Weizsäcker in their now famous papers (1) presented detailed mechanisms based upon the state of knowledge of nuclear physics at that time. In the 1940's a rapid development in the field of nuclear reactions in stars began. An important landmark In this development was the 1957 review paper of Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler, and Hoyle (1) which presented a set of processes for the synthesis of the elements by thermal fusion reaction and by explosive nuclear synthesis in collapsing stars. We would like to describe a single experiment in this grand scheme which was designed to observe directly the nuclear processes that are now occurring in our sun.
