Rare oxygen isotope detected at last – and it defies expectations
Rare oxygen isotope detected at last – and it defies expectations
Oxygen-28 might prompt physicists to revamp theories of how atomic nuclei are structured.
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
The "magic numbers" are more like an observed pattern, not a real constrain of the universe.
What's interesting for me however is that they detected four neutrons, instead of detecting silicon. Si-28 is extremely stable, and it could be in theory produced from O-28 through beta decay. This means that the repulsion there was so strong that the nucleus "decided" to eject the offensive particles instead of working with them.
One way to interpret this is that neutrons repel neutrons through strong force, but attract protons. So if you got enough protons you're able to glue some neutrons together, but if you got too few of them your atom will shit neutrons. (Note that protons hate each other twice - because of strong force and electrical charge; so a hypothetical Ca-28 would be even less stable than an O-28.)
2As someone who only barely understood what you said but is mighty impressed with your knowledge on the matter, what practical use might this have? Could this lead to some invention or project improving or is it just neat to know more about how the universe works?
2For now it's just to know better how the universe works. Perhaps in the future some application of this sort of knowledge pops up, but for that we'll need far more than just "uh, weird, it didn't undergo beta decay".
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