Elements at extremes

摘要

In neutron star mergers and super-novae, lighter elements absorb neutrons to create heavier elements with neutron-rich, radioactive nuclei. To better understand this phenomenon, physicists turned to the tin isotope Sn-132, colliding it with a target at ORNL to assess its properties as it lost a neutron to become Sn-131.The results, published afteryears of complex data analysis, were combined with a prior experiment in which a nucleus of Sn-132 gained a neutron to become Sn-133.