{"id":1013,"date":"2023-04-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/current_affairs\/uncategorized\/10-04-2023\/physicists-discover-new-uranium-isotope\/"},"modified":"2023-04-10T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-04-10T00:00:00","slug":"physicists-discover-new-uranium-isotope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/current-affairs\/10-04-2023\/physicists-discover-new-uranium-isotope","title":{"rendered":"Physicists Discover New Uranium Isotope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong><u>In News<\/u><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:disc\"><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">Physicists in Japan discovered a previously unknown isotope of uranium, with atomic number 92 and mass number 241, i.e Uranium-241 and its half-life, according to theoretical calculations, could be 40 minutes.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong><u>What is Uranium?<\/u><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:disc\"><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">Uranium is a naturally occurring chemical element with the symbol <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong>U<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"> and atomic number <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong>92<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:disc\"><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">Uranium has several isotopes, which are atoms that have the <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"><u>same number of protons<\/u><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"> but <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"><u>different numbers of neutrons<\/u><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"> like <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong>U-235<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"> and <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong>U-238<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:disc\"><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">It is a heavy metal that is radioactive and found in small quantities in rocks and soils worldwide.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:circle\"><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">Atomic number = No. of Protons = No. of Electrons<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:circle\"><span style=\"font-size:6.999999999999999pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">No. of Neutrons = Atomic mass- Atomic No.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong><u>Why does a new isotope matter?<\/u><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:disc\"><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">It re-defines the boundaries of models that physicists use to design nuclear power plants and models of exploding stars.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:disc\"><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">It gives essential nuclear information to understand the synthesis of such heavy elements in explosive astronomical events.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong><u>How was uranium-241 found?<\/u><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:disc\"><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">The researchers accelerated uranium-238 nuclei into plutonium-198 nuclei at the KEK Isotope Separation System (KISS).<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:disc\"><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">In a process called multinucleon transfer, the two isotopes exchanged protons and neutrons.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:disc\"><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">The resulting nuclear fragments contained different isotopes. This is how the researchers identified uranium-241 and measured the mass of its nucleus by using<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"><u> <\/u><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong><u>time-of-flight mass spectrometry.<\/u><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong><u>What are Magic numbers?<\/u><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:disc\"><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">In nuclear physics, a magic number is a number of nucleons (either protons or neutrons, separately) such that they are arranged into complete shells within the atomic nucleus.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:disc\"><span style=\"font-size:6.999999999999999pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">As a result, atomic nuclei with a &#8216;magic&#8217; number of protons or neutrons are much more stable than other nuclei<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:disc\"><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">The heaviest known \u2018magic\u2019 nucleus is lead (82 protons)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong>\u00a0Source: TH<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In News Physicists in Japan discovered a previously unknown isotope of uranium, with atomic number 92 and mass number 241, i.e Uranium-241 and its half-life, according to theoretical calculations, could be 40 minutes. What is Uranium? Uranium is a naturally occurring chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[26,33],"class_list":["post-1013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-affairs","tag-gs-3","tag-science-technology"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/wp-images.nextias.com\/cdn-cgi\/image\/format=auto\/ca\/uploads\/2023\/07\/2549490Screenshot_6.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}