isotopes

Researchers at the Institute of Modern Physics and collaborators have discovered two new isotopes, osmium-160 and tungsten-156, revealing potential for lead-164 to be a stable, doubly magic nucleus. This breakthrough enhances the understanding of nuclear stability and challenges traditional views on magic numbers, indicating a significant step forward in nuclear physics.Scientists at the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), along with their collaborators, have created two novel…

Spatial correlation fields of CAM3 simulated δ18O in northern China and outgoing longwave radiation. a Spatial correlations between CAM3 simulated JJA amount weighted precipitation δ18O (δ18Op) in northern China and JJA outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) at each grid cell. b Same as a but for CAM3 simulated water vapor δ18O (δ18Ov) at lower-troposphere (1000–750 hPa) in JJA. Credit: npj Climate and Atmospheric Science (2024). DOI:…

Never-before-seen ratios of particles making up atomic nuclei have emerged in a landmark experiment involving the fragmentation of heavy elements.By breaking apart the nuclei of platinum, physicists led by Oleg Tarasov of Michigan State University have discovered new isotopes of rare-Earth elements thulium, ytterbium, and lutetium. It's an achievement that scientists believe will help them understand the properties of neutron-rich nuclei and the processes that forge new elements in the collision of neutron stars.The…

Active dripstone formation in a side area of the “Kleine Teufelshöhle.” Credit: KIT (taken as part of the HEiKA Project Check Extrema)Researchers from Heidelberg and Karlsruhe use stalagmite for the reconstruction of regional and global climatic history.Tree-ring data, when integrated with information from stalagmites, has enabled a team of researchers, including geoscientists from Heidelberg University and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, to access a distinctive archive for examining natural climate fluctuations…

To make the United States self-sufficient in rare exotic elements, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has developed a latest generation electromagnetic isotope separator (EMIS) to harvest stable isotopes across the entire periodic table.During the Second World War, the scientists working on what became the Manhattan Project to develop the world's first atomic bomb for the allies needed a way of separating the fissile isotope uranium-235 from non-fissile isotope uranium-238. With what were essentially unlimited…

Aerial view of the study region in the Argentine Andes. Credit: J.R. Slosson Every second the Earth is bombarded by vast amounts of cosmic rays—invisible sub-atomic particles that originate from things like the sun and supernova explosions. These high-energy, far-traveled cosmic rays collide with atoms as they enter Earth's atmosphere and set off cascades of secondary cosmic rays. …

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Reliable carbonate carbon isotopes (δ13Ccarb) can reflect variations in global carbon cycling, and thus the paleoclimate and paleoceanographic conditions. However, significant depositional hiatus in low-latitude areas occurred during the late Pennsylvanian to early Cisuralian. Frequent subaerial…

Interactions of mantles at different depths. Credit: Prof. Dai Liqun's team. Recently, a research team led by Prof. Dai Liqun from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), has revealed that the mantle sources of Cenozoic and Mesozoic mafic igneous rocks from the eastern North China craton had gone through different types of metasomatism at different depths by comparing the…

Dr. Shankar Chellam generated this image for a 2017 African dust episode reaching Houston using NASA web resources. Credit: NASA Worldview Every summer, weather forecasters blast news about African dust plumes crossing the southern United States. And to most people, it's just dust, but to researchers at Texas A&M University, it's much more.…

Credit: Flinders University New archaeological techniques have uncovered the origins of 13 early South Australian colonists buried in unmarked graves in the Anglican Parish of St Mary's Church in Adelaide. …