Slashdot Mirror
First Observations of Short-lived Pear-shaped Atomic Nuclei
An anonymous reader sends this quote from a press release at CERN:
"An international team at the ISOLDE radioactive-beam facility at CERN has shown that some atomic nuclei can assume asymmetric, 'pear' shapes (abstract). The observations contradict some existing nuclear theories and will require others to be amended. ... Most nuclei have the shape of a rugby ball. While state-of-the-art theories are able to predict this behaviour, the same theories have predicted that for some particular combinations of protons and neutrons, nuclei can also assume asymmetric shapes, like a pear. In this case there is more mass at one end of the nucleus than the other."
And then everything went pear shaped.
Not to mention the "poor self esteem" and "great personality" protons
Everything was going great for the Atomic Nuclei, until it all went pear shaped.
moox. for a new generation.
If it's pear-shaped, Abercrombie & Fitch don't want to have anything to do with it.
It must have gotten married.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
Not to mention the "poor self esteem" and "great personality" protons
--
I'd rather not discuss my atomic weight.
Talk about a sig that sort of fits in with the convo...
Be seeing you...
that this nuclei is just more excited than the others!
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
Reminds me of the Gary Larson cartoon set in a haywire factory.
"Professor, the beam has gone out of alignment, the atom chamber is leaking and the datalogger has crashed again. I'm afraid the whole experiment has gone you-know-what."
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
For those interested: Nuclei with shapes like this or barbells are significant in solving the problem of filling that range of elements on the Periodic table that were skipped. Ideas were proposed that nuclei would need to have these shapes in order to be stable if the nucleus followed a shell model similar to electron shells. You can read more by researching "Island of Stability"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability
The image of Ra (Radium) shown is interesting, given that this atom is radioactive...i.e. unstable. With spheres being more stable than wobbly shapes, it seems to make sense that radioactive elements might vary well have asymmetric shapes at the atomic level.
I come here for the love
Subject line fail.
I come here for the love
Jesus? Call me. 867-5309.
Jenny
I'm sure that's immediately obvious to both people who have ever given a shit about rugby and also read slashdot; however "ellipsoid" would be a fuck of a lot more descriptive to most geeks.
it's just big-boned.... :D
Nice, a Penn State co-ed.
#LocalPrefixJoke
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Then there's the infamous 'fat electron', which becomes stuck in kinked wiring.
Co-ed..., now there is an archaic sexist term.
Could you explain that, please? Where I come from it means someone who goes to a mixed-sex school.
Sure. Specifically, it means a woman who goes to a mixed-sex school. If it applied equally to men and women, it wouldn't be sexist. Don't take my comment to seriously. I don't really think you are a sexist. The word is used quite commonly. Most people just don't reflect on its implications.
Cheers!
Heard in the lab: "Dammit, that neutron went straight to my ass!"
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Some God you are. Bring up the console and do
God++
and see if you ... wait, if you're dead...
and TROLLED !!
Table-ized A.I.
"...and that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana shaped."
The real implication is that it's OK for guys to bang every chick in sight, but that women that do so are sluts sleeping their way to the top.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
...but then again, as soon as it comes down to QM, everything goes pear-shaped...
This idea persists because women collectively don't get all that offended by non-virgin men. Considering all the diseases, plus the risks of the man supporting some other woman (willingly or not), this is kind of a problem. We could use a derogatory word for men who run around.
That said, I don't see this changing much. There is an evolutionary reason for women to prefer men who get around; they may be more likely to produce sons who can do so. There is likewise an evolutionary reason for men to prefer women who are hesitant, at least if the man could end up providing resources.
Paedo State. FIFY.
I've never noticed the term being applied to women more than men. I've always heard it used as an alternative, roughly, to 'mixed genders'. I suspect the sexist overtones began fading decades ago.
..when I told her she had a nice pear.
There's an evolutionary reason for racism too, but we've made much better progress on that front.
Wait, so a word that refers to women instead of men is sexist?
Well, I guess I won't be calling anyone a female or woman.
Wait, what can I call them?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Dr. Stoyan Sarg already predicted such atomic nuclei shape in his "Basic Structures of Matter - Supergravitation Unified Theory":
http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/ground-breaking-new-book-offers-scientific-reasoning-for-cold-fusion-energy-248341.htm
BTW here is a better article from Physics World:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/may/08/nuclear-physics-goes-pear-shaped
Actually, the research referred to in the news here directly contradicts Dr. Sarg's models. Although both say the nucleus have non-spherical components, the research here shows that for some nuclei it is still spherical, and for the pear shaped ones it is still really close to spherical. How close the structures are to spherical still contradicts Dr. Sarg's models, which seem to ignore research into nuclear structure and instead spend a lot of time talking about how limited resolution of electron microscopes are, which are not really relevant to the subject.
This is almost the same as saying that measurements that Earth is not a perfect sphere supports flat Earth theories because they also say that the Earth is not a perfect sphere...
All the closer we get to atomic fruit salad.
There is a subtlety here. The definition of your use of the word "co-ed" is the following:
A woman who attends a coeducational college or university.
However, if you think about it, the term could be -- and I argue -- should refer to both men and women who attend a coeducational college or university. Applying it exclusively to women suggest it is only the women who have been "allowed" to co-educate with men.