{"id":122038,"date":"2021-04-27T21:23:16","date_gmt":"2021-04-28T04:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/physicists-net-neutron-star-gold-from-measurement-of-lead"},"modified":"2021-04-27T21:23:16","modified_gmt":"2021-04-28T04:23:16","slug":"physicists-net-neutron-star-gold-from-measurement-of-lead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/physicists-net-neutron-star-gold-from-measurement-of-lead","title":{"rendered":"Physicists net neutron star gold from measurement of lead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/physicists-net-neutron-star-gold-from-measurement-of-lead2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Nuclear physicists have made a new, highly accurate measurement of the thickness of the neutron \u201cskin\u201d that encompasses the lead nucleus in experiments conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and just published in <i>Physical Review Letters<\/i>. The result, which revealed a neutron skin thickness of .28 millionths of a nanometer, has important implications for the structure and size of neutron stars.<\/p>\n<p>The protons and neutrons that form the nucleus at the heart of every atom in the universe help determine each atom\u2019s identity and properties. Nuclear physicists are studying different nuclei to learn more about how these protons and neutrons act inside the nucleus. The Lead Radius Experiment collaboration, called PREx (after the chemical symbol for lead, Pb), is studying the fine details of how protons and neutrons are distributed in lead nuclei.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe question is about where the neutrons are in lead. Lead is a heavy nucleus\u2014there\u2019s extra neutrons, but as far as the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/nuclear+force\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">nuclear force<\/a> is concerned, an equal mix of protons and neutrons works better,\u201d said Kent Paschke, a professor at the University of Virginia and experiment co-spokesperson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nuclear physicists have made a new, highly accurate measurement of the thickness of the neutron \u201cskin\u201d that encompasses the lead nucleus in experiments conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and just published in Physical Review Letters. The result, which revealed a neutron skin thickness of .28 millionths of a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-particle-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}