Stars are awesome (in the old-school non-diluted sense) which naturally makes it tempting to use more evocative language when talking about them. And you could think of ‘burning’ in such usage referring more to incandescence rather than rapid oxidation.
I was going to object to the idea that “fusion” isn’t evocative enough, but I guess that whoever first named stellar nucleosynthesis “burning” hadn’t been exposed to Dragon Ball Z, Gillette advertising and repeated claims that “thirty years from now” fusion power will solve all of our problems.
Stars are awesome (in the old-school non-diluted sense) which naturally makes it tempting to use more evocative language when talking about them. And you could think of ‘burning’ in such usage referring more to incandescence rather than rapid oxidation.
I was going to object to the idea that “fusion” isn’t evocative enough, but I guess that whoever first named stellar nucleosynthesis “burning” hadn’t been exposed to Dragon Ball Z, Gillette advertising and repeated claims that “thirty years from now” fusion power will solve all of our problems.
(And, of course, the real question here is whether Jews are allowed to operate fusion reactors on Shabbat. ;-))