Hoyle discovers that the carbon nucleus possesses an excited state just above the sum of the masses-energies of three helium nuclei; this allows the helium-beryllium system to resonate at that mass-energy; the resonance greatly prolongs the life of the unstable beryllium nucleus (a very unstable isotope formed by the fusion of two helium nuclei, the stable isotope of beryllium is beryllium9), giving a third helium nucleus an appreciable probability of hitting it; in this way all the carbon in the universe was formed against the apparent slim chances.
