Heavy barium nuclei prefer a pear shape
Tuesday, June 7, 2016 - 08:30
in Physics & Chemistry
Certain heavy barium nuclei have long been predicted to exhibit pear-like shapes. However, until recently, experimental confirmation had been impossible to achieve as these nuclei typically only live for a few seconds. The existence of this exotic shape has now been demonstrated by taking advantage of breakthroughs in both the acceleration of radioactive beams and new detector technologies.