Physicists using the Advanced Rare Isotope Separator (ARIS) at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) have produced, separated, and identified five previously unknown isotopes: thulium-182, thulium-183, ytterbium-186, ytterbium-187 and lutetium-190. These new isotopes show that FRIB is nearing the creation of nuclear specimens that currently only exist when ultradense celestial bodies known as neutron stars crash into each other.
“That’s the exciting part. We are confident we can get even closer to those nuclei that are important for astrophysics,” said Michigan State University’s Professor Alexandra Gade, scientific director of FRIB.
“This is probably the first time these isotopes have existed on the surface of the Earth,” added Michigan State University’s Professor Bradley Sherrill, head of the Advanced Rare Isotope Separator department at FRIB.
Our Sun is a cosmic atomic factory; it’s powerful enough to take the cores of two hydrogen atoms, or nuclei, and fuse them into one helium nucleus.
Hydrogen and helium are the first and lightest entries on the periodic table of the elements. Getting to the heavier elements on the table requires even more intense environments than what’s found in the Sun.
Astrophysicists hypothesize that elements like gold — about 200 times as massive as hydrogen — are created when two neutron stars merge.
Neutron stars are the leftover cores of exploded stars that were originally much larger than our Sun, but not so much larger that they can become black holes in their final acts.
Although they’re not black holes, neutron stars still cram an immense amount of mass into a very modest size.
“They’re about the size of Lansing (the capital of Michigan) with the mass of our Sun. It’s not certain, but people think that all of the gold on Earth was made in neutron star collisions,” Professor Sherrill said.
By making isotopes that are present at the site of a neutron star collision, physicists could…
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