  While the 12C(a,g)16O reaction plays a central role in nuclear astrophysics,
the cross section at energies relevant to hydrostatic helium burning is too
small to be directly measured in the laboratory. The beta-delayed alpha
spectrum of 16N can be used to constrain the extrapolation of the E1 component
of the S-factor; however, with this approach the resulting S-factor becomes
strongly correlated with the assumed beta-alpha branching ratio. We have
remeasured the beta-alpha branching ratio by implanting 16N ions in a segmented
Si detector and counting the number of beta-alpha decays relative to the number
of implantations. Our result, 1.49(5)e-5, represents a 24% increase compared to
the accepted value and implies an increase of 14% in the extrapolated S-factor.
