{"id":192581,"date":"2024-07-09T04:26:31","date_gmt":"2024-07-09T09:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/nuclear-decay-detected-in-the-recoil-of-a-levitating-bead"},"modified":"2024-07-09T04:26:31","modified_gmt":"2024-07-09T09:26:31","slug":"nuclear-decay-detected-in-the-recoil-of-a-levitating-bead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/nuclear-decay-detected-in-the-recoil-of-a-levitating-bead","title":{"rendered":"Nuclear Decay Detected in the Recoil of a Levitating Bead"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

A levitating microparticle is observed to recoil when a nucleus embedded in the particle decays\u2014opening the door to future searches of invisible decay products.<\/p>\n

For centuries, physicists have exploited momentum conservation as a powerful means to analyze dynamical processes, from billiard-ball collisions to galaxy formation to subatomic particle creation in accelerators. David Moore and his research team at Yale University have now put this approach to work in a new setting: they used momentum conservation to determine when a radioactive atom emitted a single helium nucleus, known as an alpha particle (Fig. 1<\/a>) [1<\/a>]. The demonstration suggests that\u2014with further improvements\u2014researchers might be able to use this technique to detect other nuclear-decay products, such as neutrinos and hypothetical dark-matter particles (see also Special Feature: Sensing a Nuclear Kick on a Speck of Dust<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The basic idea is simple: if the radioactive atom is embedded in a larger object, then an outgoing decay product will exert a backreaction on that object, causing it to recoil in the opposite direction. But is it really possible to detect the recoil kick from a particle as small as a helium nucleus? The answer lies in how precisely we can measure the larger object\u2019s momentum. One of the main limitations is friction: if the larger object is slowed down by frictional forces, then its motion won\u2019t reflect the impulse from the decaying particle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A levitating microparticle is observed to recoil when a nucleus embedded in the particle decays\u2014opening the door to future searches of invisible decay products. For centuries, physicists have exploited momentum conservation as a powerful means to analyze dynamical processes, from billiard-ball collisions to galaxy formation to subatomic particle creation in accelerators. David Moore and his [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192581","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\/192581","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=192581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}