{"id":122549,"date":"2021-05-13T11:23:18","date_gmt":"2021-05-13T18:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/physicists-have-measured-an-atoms-neutron-skin-for-the-first-time"},"modified":"2021-05-13T11:23:18","modified_gmt":"2021-05-13T18:23:18","slug":"physicists-have-measured-an-atoms-neutron-skin-for-the-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/physicists-have-measured-an-atoms-neutron-skin-for-the-first-time","title":{"rendered":"Physicists have measured an atom\u2019s \u2018neutron skin\u2019 for the first time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/physicists-have-measured-an-atoms-neutron-skin-for-the-first-time2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Physicists have measured the \u201cskin\u201d of an atom for the first time and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it is extremely thin. The measurement may help us understand the properties of neutron stars.<\/p>\n<p>Lead-208, an isotope that contains 82 protons and 126 neutrons, has a type of nucleus that physicists refer to as \u201cdoubly magic\u201d because both the protons and the neutrons are arranged neatly into shells <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2169113-weve-measured-the-pressure-inside-a-proton-and-its-extreme\/\">inside the nucleus<\/a>. These shells keep the atom relatively stable and make it simpler to experiment on, so when the PREX collaboration at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Virginia set out to measure neutron skin, they opted to experiment on lead-208.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Physicists have measured the \u201cskin\u201d of an atom for the first time and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it is extremely thin. The measurement may help us understand the properties of neutron stars. Lead-208, an isotope that contains 82 protons and 126 neutrons, has a type of nucleus that physicists refer to as \u201cdoubly magic\u201d because both the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122549","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\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}