There's a lot going on here so I'll try my best. They were looking for muh darkmatter but didn't find any (probably because it doesn't exist). Still, unlike all that xenon, this effort was not wasted.
First up: the halo nucleus. Apparently a neutron can exist outside a nucleus in "orbit" around it. (Given quantum blah blah blah.) Chemically the atom acts as usual for as long as it exists, as with other exotica. One such halo-isotope is beryllium-11. The nucleus just cannot tarry for long: in 13.8 seconds one of those neutrons goes beta so boron-11. (Is this halflife or per atom...?)
But which neutron, is the question - in a halo. What if it's the neutron on the outside? Yassid Ayyad and Wolfi Mittig say: this "boron-11" won't even be 13.8s stable; its new outer proton will sproiiing itself out. Thus making beryllium-10. Also unstable, we must point out. But at least on the 1.4 million year scale.
Given how exotic halo-nuclei are - I admit not having heard of them - it doesn't surprise me that something like this might happen to them. Mind you, there wasn't and isn't a lot of baseline research on them.
No comments:
Post a Comment