Chinese Academy of Sciences
It is always exciting to find new isotopes with extreme neutron/proton numbers in nuclear physics research. In the region of heavy nuclei, α-decay is one of the pervasive decay modes and plays an essential role in searching for new isotopes. However, even after about a century of studying α-decay, scientists still cannot perfectly describe how the α-particle is formed at the surface of the nucleus before its emission.
In the α-decay process, the α-particle can be regarded not only as two protons plus two neutrons, but also as two proton-neutron pairs. Although previous studies have proved the importance of the pairing forces between the identical nucleons, it remains unclear whether the strong proton-neutron interactions have an impact on α-decay properties, especially in the heavy nuclear region.
A Lightweight Among Heavyweights
Physics 14, s43
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Discovering new isotopes is like the stamp collecting of physics, but the consequences of adding to the set are much further reaching. A team of researchers using the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou, China, has now expanded the collection with the discovery of the lightest uranium isotope to date [1]. The finding could have implications for our understanding of a particular type of radioactive decay that is still mysterious despite more than a century of work.
Uranium is an inherently unstable element. All of its isotopes are radioactive, with the most abundant ones having half-lives ranging from 150,000 to 4.5 billion years (roughly the age of Earth). Naturally occurring uranium contains between 140 and 146 neutrons. The newly discovered isotope has just 122, one fewer than the previous record for the element.