Oxygen-28 may challenge a fundamental law of physics
After scientists created oxygen-28 in the lab, it almost immediately degraded, baffling physicists around the world
For the first time, scientists have created oxygen-28, a rare oxygen isotope that has 12 more neutrons than oxygen-16, the most common form of oxygen on the planet.
This newly created “heavy” oxygen isotope has the highest number of neutrons ever seen in an oxygen atom and was expected to be ultrastable and last virtually forever.
Instead, however, it degraded incredibly quickly — a finding that challenges our understanding of the strong nuclear force, which binds the fundamental particles of matter, such as protons and neutrons, to form larger particles in an atom’s nucleus.
“It opens a very, very big fundamental question about nature’s strongest interaction, the nuclear strong force,” Rituparna Kanungo, a physicist at Saint Mary’s University in Canada who was not involved with the experiment, told New Scientist.
To create oxygen-28, a team led by researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology blasted a beam of fluorine-29 — an isotope that has nine protons — at a liquid-hydrogen target at the Riken RI Beam Factory in Wako, Japan.
Upon impact, both the hydrogen and the fluorine-29 lost a proton, which created an entirely new molecule of oxygen-28, according to the study, published Aug. 30 in the journal Nature.
Under the Standard Model, the leading theory of particle physics, particles should be stable if the shells in an atom’s nucleus are filled with certain numbers of protons and neutrons that are known as “magic” numbers.
Oxygen-28 contains 20 neutrons and eight protons, both of which are magic numbers, suggesting that the molecule should have been supremely stable or “doubly magic.” But that was not the case.
During the experiment, the oxygen-28 molecule decayed within a zeptosecond, or a trillionth of a billionth of a second. In fact, its presence was only confirmed by the products it left behind when it decayed: oxygen-24 and four neutrons.
“I was surprised,” Takashi Nakamura, a physicist at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and co-author of the study, told Nature. “Personally, I thought it was doubly magic. But this is what nature says.”
Though the experiment has not yet been replicated, the findings of this study suggest that the current list of magic numbers may not tell the full story of whether molecules are stable.
In a separate case, scientists in 2009 showed that an oxygen-24 isotope behaved as though it were doubly magic, even though it did not have a magic number of protons and neutrons.
The new study could pave the way for future research that may provide more clues about the mysterious forces gluing particles together in an atom’s nucleus, according to Michael Thoennessen, a professor of physics at Michigan State University and co-author of the study.
“I think the results of the experiments demonstrate the importance of studying these exotic nuclei along and beyond the limit of existence,” he told Live Science in an email.
“We still do not fully know what binds neutrons and protons together to form nuclei. Exploring these extremes test the foundations of the nuclear models.”
See more here livescience.com
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Herb Rose
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Combining science and magic produces an oxymoron. Science is about discovering the reason things happen, magic is obscuring the reason things happen. Considering that these scientists do not know the nature of a neutron or the strong force (non-existent) they should drop the word science and call what they do magic.
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Chris
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Pardon me if I missed your sarcasm, but the term “magic,” in this case, is not referring to the supernatural or spiritual. It’s a common term is subatomic particle physics. https://www.britannica.com/science/magic-number-atomic-structure
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Herb Rose
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Hi Chris,
Subatomic particle physics is about magic.
When a proton and an electron combine it produces a neutron plus energy. When a neutron decays it produces a proton, an electron, plus energy in the form of a gamma ray. Now that’s magic. The magic is done because the neutron is not made from an electron and a proton, as a sane person would think, but quarks with different flavors.
The nucleus of an atom is held together by the strong and weak nuclear forces which overcome the repelling force between the protons in the nucleus. If these forces do not have enough energy the nucleus decays.
In beta decay the nucleus emit an electron from the nucleus (which would help hold the protons together) with enough force to propel it through the surrounding electrons (preventing it from recombine with the nucleus) plus energy in the form of a gamma ray. After expending this energy the nuclear forces are now able to hold the nucleus together even though the internal repelling force has increased due to the addition of a proton. Now that’s good magic.
Herb
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Squidly
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Yes, “magic” meaning “special”, not “mystical” in this context. In other words, one could alternatively say “special number” as opposed to “magic number”.
Seems quite apparent to me.
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Howdy
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Magic has nothing to do with mysticism. It is an occurrence that defies explanation. Science being what it is, that seems very appropriate:
“This newly created “heavy” oxygen isotope has the highest number of neutrons ever seen in an oxygen atom and was expected to be ultrastable and last virtually forever.”
“Expected”… Not scientific, but based on hope, and inflated belief in ones ability, vs reality.
Just another one to add to the growing list of, ‘we didn’t actually know what we thought we knew in the first place”, subjects.
Regardless of it’s intended use, ‘magic’, to explain anything in any area of ‘expertise’ is unfortunate, and brings the whole subject down.
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Joe
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Scientists????? More like Government Bureaucrats.
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VOWG
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If “they” keep working at it “they” just might succeed in killing all of us, that would include them. I guess rational thought no longer exists.
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RockyTSquirrel
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agree, VOWG
Rational Thought, has left the building as far as current scientific research is involved..
Interesting enough, nature may have stepped in to delay the altering of reality by such misguided research..
..
RTS
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