I thought they did know that if the sun was solely dependent on chemical reactions, then it would have burned itself out more quickly than the age of the earth suggested.
I was glibly assuming that Fermi would know that the sun was nuclear powered. So he would already have one example of a large scale nuclear reaction to hand. Hans Bethe won his Nobel prize for discovering this. Checking dates, This obituary dates the discovery to 1938. So the timing is a little tight.
As you say, they knew that the sun wasn’t powered by chemical fires, they wouldn’t burn of long enough, but perhaps I’m expecting Fermi to have assimilated new physics quicker than is humanly possible.
I thought they did know that if the sun was solely dependent on chemical reactions, then it would have burned itself out more quickly than the age of the earth suggested.
I was glibly assuming that Fermi would know that the sun was nuclear powered. So he would already have one example of a large scale nuclear reaction to hand. Hans Bethe won his Nobel prize for discovering this. Checking dates, This obituary dates the discovery to 1938. So the timing is a little tight.
As you say, they knew that the sun wasn’t powered by chemical fires, they wouldn’t burn of long enough, but perhaps I’m expecting Fermi to have assimilated new physics quicker than is humanly possible.