Subatomic tetraneutron particle confirmed
16 Nov 2016 by Evoluted New Media
A team of physicists in America have helped prove the existence of a subatomic particle once thought theoretical.
A team of physicists in America have helped prove the existence of a subatomic particle once thought theoretical.
Earlier this year scientists in Japan claimed to have found evidence of the tetraneutron – a structure of four neutrons. Now the US team have proven this was not an erroneous results using supercomputer simulations.
Dr James Vary, from Iowa State University and co-author of the study published in Physical Review Letters, said: “This opens up a whole new line of research. Studying the tetraneutron will help us understand interneutron forces including previously unexplored features of the unstable two-neutron and three-neutron systems."
The lifetime of a tetraneutron is 5x10-22s, in comparison a single neutron turns into a proton after 10 minutes. Nuclear physicists have been searching for this molecule for more than 50 years - employing a wide range of techniques to detect it.
In Japan, researchers collided a beam of Helium-8 (Helium with four extra neutrons) with Helium-4 atoms. The resulting collisions saw Helium-8 broken into Helium-4 and a tetraneutron before it too broke apart into four single neutrons. The properties of the predicted tetraneutron in the scientists’ calculations matched the observations seen in Japan.
Vary said: “We know that additional experiments with state-of-the-art facilities are in preparation with the goal to get precise characteristics of the tetraneutron. We are providing our state-of-the-art predictions to help guide these experiments.”
Other than the tetraneutron, a neutron star is the only other known neutron structure, composed almost of the neutrally charged particle in the order of 1057. Future experiments may look to find other stable neutron structures that could exist in between tetraneutrons and neutron stars.
