Physicists at RIKEN have created an exceptionally neutron-rich sodium isotope, 39Na, which was previously believed to be impossible. This breakthrough has major implications for understanding atomic nuclei structure and the creation of Earth’s heavier elements. In extremely neutron-rich form of the element sodium—which many models of atomic nuclei predict shouldn’t exist—has been created by nuclear physicists at RIKEN for the first time[1]. If you made table salt from this super-heavy version of sodium—and the most neutron-rich isotope of chlorine, salt’s other constituent—it would taste and behave like normal salt, except it would be roughly 1.6 times heavier, says nuclear physicist...