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May 16, 2022 06:40 pm

New US Lab To Create Versions of Atoms Never Recorded on Earth

From carbon to uranium, oxygen to iron, chemical elements are the building blocks of the world around us and the wider universe. Now, physicists are hoping to gain an unprecedented glimpse into their origins, with the opening of a new facility that will create thousands of peculiar and unstable versions of atoms never before recorded on Earth. From a report: By studying these versions, known as isotopes, they hope to gain new insights into the reactions that created the elements within exploding stars, as well as testing theories about the "strong force" -- one of the four fundamental forces in nature, which binds protons and neutrons together in an atom's nucleus. The facility could also yield new isotopes for medical use. Atoms are composed of protons, neutrons and electrons. The number of protons dictates an atom's chemical behaviour and which element it is -- eg carbon always has six protons, and gold 79 -- whereas atoms of the same element containing different numbers of neutrons are called isotopes. Because many isotopes are unstable and decay quickly -- sometimes within fractions of a second -- scientists have only studied a small proportion of those thought to exist.

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