A pumpkin-shaped atomic nucleus has been created by physicists in Finland.
The nucleus has the shortest half-life of any of the radioactive elements. The physicists reported in the journal Physical Review Letters that it loses half its radioactivity in 450 seconds.
A silvery metal with 71 protons and 71 neutrons in its nucleus, lutetium is a rare earth element. The metallic element ytterbium is found in the Earth. In the 1980s, scientists observed a variation of the atom with a different number of neutrons in the nucleus, known as lutetium-151, which decays and throws off a protons from its nucleus while in its ground state. The ground state is the lowest level of energy that an atom can have. lutetium-151 was the first isotope to emit protons while it was in its stable ground state.
Researchers are able to peer inside the nucleus of an atom and understand how protons and neutrons bond together. Kalle Auranen, a researcher in physics at the University of Jyv, created a new isotope of lutetium, which has 71 protons and 78 particles. lutetium-151 was weirder than lutetium-149. Its nucleus is oblong and resembles a pumpkin, but it is not a neat sphere. The most distorted nucleus ever measured is lutetium-149.
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The half-life of lutetium-149 is shorter than that of lutetium-151.
The researchers created the isotope by using nickel, nickel-58, and ruthenium, ruthenium-96. The half-life of ytterbium-148 is 250 milliseconds.
lutetium-148 might be able to last a little longer than lutetium- 149.
The pumpkin nucleus can be read at PhysicsWorld.
It was originally published on Live Science.
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