Not all of the material around us is stable. Some materials may undergo radioactive decay to form more stable isotopes. Scientists have now observed a new decay mode for the first time. In this decay, a lighter form of oxygen, oxygen-13 (with eight protons and five neutrons), decays by breaking into three helium nuclei (an atom without the surrounding electrons), a proton, and a positron (the antimatter version of an electron).
) and a proton being emitted following beta-decay. The findings can inform scientists about decay processes and the properties of the nucleus before the decay.known as a cyclotron at the Cyclotron Institute at Texas A&M University to produce a beam of radioactive nuclei at high energies . They sent this beam of radioactive material, oxygen-13, into a piece of equipment known as the Texas Active Target Time Projection Chamber .
The material stops inside this detector, which is filled with carbon dioxide gas, and decays after about ten milliseconds by emitting a positron and a neutrino . By implanting the oxygen-13 into the detector one nucleus at a time and waiting for it to decay, the researchers measured any particles that boil off following the beta-decay using the TexAT TPC.
Next, they analyzed the data with a computer program to identify the tracks the particles leave in the gas. This allowed them to identify the rare events as those where four of the particles are emitted following beta-decay.J. Bishop et al, First Observation of the β3αp Decay of O13 via β -Delayed Charged-Particle Spectroscopy,
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