Okay. Now can someone please explain in layman's terms how atoms like hydrogen, helium, and lithium change into new atoms? What's the process? And how do we know this other than a physicist calculations on a white board? How does it happen?
Anyone?
Conceptually, it is NOW very easy to understand.
FIND a massive cloud of Hydrogen floating in the universe. Give it enough time and as gravity draws the gas together, eventually it will get so big that it will start to get hot due to the massive pull of gravity from a massive amount of hydrogen.
If it gets enough gas to collapse enough to get hot enough, the hydrogen will have enough energy to FUSE (or FUSSION) where the hydrogen atoms combine to form helium.
Helium weighs SLIGHTLY less than the hydrogen that formed it and that is where Einstein's famous equation comes into play:
ENERGY = MASS x C**2 where C is the speed of light squared. The mass change is small BUT the speed of light is a large number hence with Zillions of hydrogen atoms per second combining that means lots of energy. The energy emitted helps to keep the interior of this hydrogen ball hotter.
Eventually the hydrogen is used up and then the helium fuses which makes even heavier atoms. But that process eventually stops when the hydrogen is used up and the heavier atoms cant' fuse anymore (the heavier ones don't fuse as well) and a huge explosion occurs. Depending on the mass of this ball of gas, big ones make the biggest booms, smaller ones like our sun boom and collapse.
Search on YOUTUBE for DAVID BUTLER and watch a few of his videos.
A navy vet? I started my nuclear education in Navy Nuclear Power School, Mare Island, Cal.