Interpretation of nuclear reaction rates

[kailicao]

Describe the bug
Please see: https://lists.mesastar.org/pipermail/mesa-users/2024-May/015184.html

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Make a copy of '$MESA_DIR/data/rates_data/rate_tables/'
2. Specify rate tables to use in 'rate_tables/rate_list.txt'
3. Run the model to generate 'rates_cache/' and cache files
4. Use '$MESA_DIR/rates/test/show_rates' to get a readable version of the rate

Expected behavior

1. The rate is a smooth function of temperature in log-log space
2. Some reasonable extrapolation is used beyond the temperature range of the table

Screenshots

See the email linked above for description.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server
• Version: 7.9 (Maipo)

[Debraheem]

Thanks for documenting this! @warrickball mentioned this as a previous issue which was never fully resolved, see #421.

We are discussing it in this thread as well: #645