2023-09-11 06:00:02
Researchers have created oxygen-28, a rare form of oxygen, for the first time. But a very unexpected consequence occurred, challenging our understanding of the strong nuclear force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature.
Image d’illustration Pixabay
A team from the Tokyo Institute of Technology succeeded in creating oxygen-28 by bombarding a target with liquid hydrogen. fluorite beam-29. The result was surprising: instead of being ultra-stable as expected, oxygen-28 degraded in an extremely short time. , or one zeptosecond. Rituparna Kanungo, a physicist at Saint Mary’s University in Canada, points out that this discovery opens a big question regarding nuclear force. a force which is exerted between nucleons. It is responsible for the…) strong. This force (The word force can designate a mechanical power over things, and also, metaphorically, a…) is responsible for the cohesion of elementary particles, such as protons and neutrons, in the nucleus of an atom (A atom (Ancient Greek ἄτομος [atomos]” what…).
According to the standard model of particle physics, “magic numbers” of protons and neutrons should make an atom stable. Oxygen-28, with its 20 neutrons and 8 protons, should therefore be “double magic” and extremely stable. This was not the case.
In the experiment, oxygen-28 decayed so quickly that its presence was only confirmed by the products left behind: oxygen-24 and four neutrons.
Takashi Nakamura, co-author of the study, expressed surprise at this unexpected result. Michael Thoennessen, a physics professor at Michigan State University and also a co-author, suggests that these findings might pave the way for new research into the forces that hold particles together (In set theory, a set refers to intuitively a collection…) in the nucleus of an atom.
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