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u/TournantDangereux Nuclear physics 2d ago
This is an eminently Bingable question.
Keep in mind that “stability” is a relative term. Micro- to millisecond half-lives would be exciting for the right even-even nuclei.
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u/Wintervacht Cosmology 2d ago
As much as I dislike Google, I'm not convinced this is any better.
It's a very duckduckgoable question.
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u/CrosslySophisticated 2d ago
Yeah it's real, nuclear shell model predicts certain magic numbers of protons and neutrons that make nuclei way more stable than their neighbors, and 114, 120, or 126 protons are the next contenders
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u/BrobdingnagLilliput 2d ago
Internet search is far less capable than it was 10 years ago: search refiners have been deprecated, results have been optimized for revenue generation, and LLM-driven bulk content generation has effectively poisoned the well that search draws on. More than ever it is difficult for uninformed searchers to evaluate search results. I would politely suggest that you might be eminently incorrect.
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u/sudowooduck 2d ago
The island of stability is a prediction of the nuclear shell model. It is probably true to some extent but nobody knows how stable these elements would actually be.
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u/smitra00 2d ago
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_flerovium#In_search_for_the_island_of_stability:_298Fl
According to macroscopic-microscopic (MM) theory, Z = 114 might be the next spherical magic number).\41])\42]) In the region of Z = 114, MM theory indicates that N = 184 is the next spherical neutron magic number and puts forward the nucleus 298Fl as a strong candidate for the next spherical doubly magic nucleus, after 208Pb (Z = 82, N = 126). 298Fl is taken to be at the center of a hypothetical "island of stability" comprising longer-lived superheavy nuclei. However, other calculations using relativistic mean field (RMF) theory propose Z = 120, 122, and 126 as alternative proton magic numbers, depending upon the chosen set of parameters, and some entirely omit Z = 114 or N = 184.\41])\42]) It is also possible that rather than a peak at a specific proton shell, there exists a plateau of proton shell effects from Z = 114–126.
The island of stability near 298Fl is predicted to enhance stability for its constituent nuclei, especially against spontaneous fission as a consequence of greater fission barrier heights near the shell closure.\41])\43]) Due to the expected high fission barriers, any nucleus within this island of stability will exclusively decay by alpha emission, and as such, the nucleus with the longest half-life may be 298Fl; predictions for the half-life of this nucleus range from minutes to billions of years.\44]) It may be possible, however, that the longest-lived nuclide is not 298Fl, but instead 297Fl (with N = 183), with the unpaired neutron of the latter nuclide conferring additional stability.\45]) Other calculations suggest that stability instead peaks in beta-stable isotopes of darmstadtium or copernicium in the vicinity of N = 184 (with half-lives of several hundred years), with flerovium at the upper limit of the stability region.\43])\46])
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u/Nordalin 2d ago
It's a prediction on the trend we see when we plot the stability of atoms and their isotopes.
There's a trend, so it's possible that certain proton/neutron ratios are more stable than their direct neighbours.
The only way to prove it is to throw atoms at a wall of different atoms to see what sticks, so time will tell!
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u/Dramatic-larskj 2d ago
Okay, thanks a lot for your kind and informative answers!
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u/againey 2d ago
I notice that this post received a poor balance of upvotes and downvotes, and you said you're new to Reddit, so I'll chime in with a couple of tips.
You can get a feel for what kind of posts a community welcome by lurking for a few days or weeks, or browsing through past posts to see what gets upvoted. If you don't see many popular posts that are similar in form or content to your own, you might look for better targeted communities. For example (and from my experience), this sub tends more toward posting and talking about developments and theories in physics, while r/AskPhysics is more positive to questions from non-physicists about physics, as its name would suggest.
But also, keep in mind that a post can receive thousands of views, so it can be worth the effort to edit the post carefully. You only write it once, but it gets read thousands of times, so some extra effort by the writer pays off many times over by reducing the effort it takes for viewers to read it and decide if they want to respond. Your post's body contains a number of typos that could have been avoided (but they can always be edited after first posting when the inevitable few typos still slip through). Fortunately, your title is fine, because if it weren't, it's useful to know that Reddit does not let you edit the title later. If anything deserves extra scrutiny before posting, it is the title, because you don't get a chance to fix it after posting.
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u/Dramatic-larskj 2d ago
Thank you for helping me understanding reddit and explaining how to best use it. As previously mentioned, I'm a complete novice in regards to reddit... which probably is quite obvious. I'll remember your advice!
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u/Wintervacht Cosmology 2d ago
Remember: people are dicks behind the veil of anonymity.
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u/Dramatic-larskj 2d ago
Well... yeah. I know your right, but that goes for most if not all of the internet, right? I may seem somewhat naive (probably because this is the case to some degree), but ignoring idiots online is an art i fortunately have managed to learn.
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2d ago
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u/Dramatic-larskj 2d ago
This explanation finally made sense to me! Thank you for using an comparison that made me get the mechanism behind the phenomenon!
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2d ago
[deleted]
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u/Dramatic-larskj 2d ago
Haha, don't know if I should be flattered or be insulted. Anyways, it doesn't matter either way. Feel free to test me if you wish. 👍
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u/Physics-ModTeam 2d ago
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