Rutgers University Physics/Astronomy Colloquium

The Hoyle state, without which we will not exist, has been used (in the anthropic view of the universe) to constrain the light quark mass and the strength of the electromagnetic interaction within the frame of effective field theory calculation on the lattice. But what is the structure of the Hoyle state? After a short tutorial in elementary nuclear physics and elementary astrophysics we will recall even more elementary symmetry principles that will allow us to tackle this question. Major progress has been achieved by challenging experiments, but we await results of crucial measurements.