Posted on 05/04/2021 7:49:05 AM PDT by Red Badger
Scientists have discovered a new type of uranium that is the lightest ever known. The discovery could reveal more about a weird alpha particle that gets ejected from certain radioactive elements as they decay.
The newfound uranium, called uranium-214, is an isotope, or a variant of the element, with 30 more neutrons than protons, one fewer neutron than the next-lightest known uranium isotope. Because neutrons have mass, uranium-214 is much lighter than more common uranium isotopes, including uranium-235, which is used in nuclear reactors and has 51 extra neutrons.
This newfound isotope isn't just lighter than others, but it also showed unique behaviors during its decay. As such, the new findings will help scientists better understand a radioactive decay process known as alpha decay, in which an atomic nucleus loses a group of two protons and two neutrons - collectively called an alpha particle.
Though scientists know that alpha decay results in the ejection of this alpha particle, after a century of study, they still don't know the exact details of how the alpha particle is formed before it gets ejected.
Related: Elementary, my dear: 8 elements you never heard of
The researchers created the new uranium isotope at the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou, China. There, they shone a beam of argon at a target made of tungsten inside a machine called a gas-filled recoil separator - in this case the Spectrometer for Heavy Atoms and Nuclear Structure, or SHANS. By shining a laser at the tungsten, the researchers effectively added protons and neutrons to the material to create uranium.
The new uranium-214 isotope had a half-life of just half a millisecond, meaning that's the amount of time it takes for half of the radioactive sample to decay. The most common isotope of uranium - called uranium-238 - has a half-life of about 4.5 billion years, which is about the age of Earth.
By carefully watching how the isotopes decayed, the scientists were able to study the strong nuclear force - one of the four fundamental forces that hold matter together - acting on the alpha particle parts - the neutrons and protons - on the surface of the uranium.
They found that the proton and neutron in each alpha particle interacted much more strongly than in isotopes and other elements with similar numbers of protons and neutrons that have been previously studied.
This is likely due to the specific number of neutrons inside the nucleus of uranium-214, the researchers said. The new isotope has 122 neutrons, nearing the "magic neutron number" of 126, which is especially stable due to the configuration of the neutrons in complete sets, or shells.
With this configuration, it is easier for scientists to calculate the strong force interaction between the protons and neutrons. That makes these isotopes particularly interesting to scientists, since studying these interactions can reveal features related to nuclear structure and decay process, said study lead author Zhiyuan Zhang, physicist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The scientists suspect that this proton-neutron interaction could be even stronger heavier radioactive elements such as isotopes of plutonium and neptunium. These elements have a few more protons, and the configuration of their orbits suggests they could have even stronger interactions than the uranium isotopes.
The scientists would like to study other elemental isotopes near the magic neutron number; however, since such elements have even shorter half-lives, even more sensitive detectors and more powerful beams will be needed.
The new findings were published April 14 in the journal Physical Review Letters.
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This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.
https://www.livescience.com/lightest-uranium-isotope-discovered.html
That would be fission, not fusion. If you think it makes sense to ping the list, you’ll find it at the bottom of my profile page. Most of them probably won’t mind.
I wouldn’t want to create con-fusion..................
U-214 would be almost exactly 214/238 as dense as U-238.
Since U-238 has a density of 19.1 grams per cm3, that comes to about 17.1 grams per cm3.
However, as others here have pointed out, the extremely short half-life (measured in milliseconds) would make storage a problem (/understatement).
Regards,
Yeah, noticed that “slight problem” when I last tried to reload the reactor with this new fuel they sold me. Seems it vanished before we unloaded it from the UPS truck.
Might need FedEx overnight delivery next time.
Seriously, how did they just now find/analyze the 122 neutron isotope, but not the apparently more stable 126 weight version?
Gonna need bigger neutrons..................
There is a secondary issue bearing down. I got a new cellphone and it doesn’t support my Bluetooth keyboard. I can’t select & copy individual paragraphs like the ping list.
Plus, when I try to select my entire profile page and delete everything but the ping list, it hangs my phone. So I’m kinda dead in the water .
Get a tablet, for FR. They are very cheap. $40 for a 7” Fire at Kohl’s and other fine retailers...........
Sorry, honey. There’s a reason they call me Uranium 214.
One of the things I really like about FR is the range of topics covered here. It’s amazing, really.
I like the price and the concept. But it turns out that my cellphone carrier charges a “tethering” fee if I hook up across Wi-Fi or USB.
What I need is a tablet I can pop my cellphone Sim Card into.
I might be able to operate across bluetooth but the Galacy A32 doesn’t support my bluetooth keyboard so I have little confidence it’ll support a tablet.
I lost a few isotopes one time.
Uranium 235 if I recall.
For some reason everyone got upset.
5.56mm
It appears that the Chinese uranium 214 is just like Chinese food...
Interesting & satisfying, but doesn’t stick around very long...
Nice work, the description of the experimental measurements are here https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.06023.pdf
The isotopes measured as of now are from z= 214 to 242 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_uranium but many more will be discovered. By using Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov method some data have been calculated for z = 209 to 296.
http://www-phynu.cea.fr/science_en_ligne/carte_potentiels_microscopiques/choix/isotopes/zz92_eng.html
This https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTOp_2ZVZmM&t=192s is a very good visualization of the valley of stability depending on the number of protons and neutrons.
Cold Fusion Ping List
Keywords: ColdFusion; LENR; lanr; CMNS
chat—science
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Vortex-L
http://tinyurl.com/pxtqx3y
Best book to get started on this subject:
EXCESS HEAT
Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed by Charles Beaudette
https://www.abebooks.com/9780967854809/Excess-Heat-Why-Cold-Fusion-0967854806/plp
Updated No Internal Trolling Rules for FR per Jim Robinson
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3928396/posts
If someone says stop, then stop. Do not enter onto a thread on a topic you don’t like just to disrupt, rattle cages, poke sticks, insult the regulars, or engage in trolling activities, etc.
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I changed my mind about pinging the cold fusion list to a fission thread because it mentions alpha decay and some cold fusion cells have logged this kind of decay.
http://markfisher.net/johnfisher/polyneutron_project/cold_fusion.html
What is the energy-dependent cross section for neutron absorption look like for it?
Ping to Uranium lite.
Don’t know what I would do with Uranium Lite but I sure could use some transparent aluminum for a patio roof I plan to build.
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