{"id":21872,"date":"2016-02-10T02:48:40","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T10:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/physicists-say-theyve-finally-confirmed-the-existence-of-a-four-neutron-no-proton-particle"},"modified":"2017-04-24T22:30:50","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T05:30:50","slug":"physicists-say-theyve-finally-confirmed-the-existence-of-a-four-neutron-no-proton-particle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/physicists-say-theyve-finally-confirmed-the-existence-of-a-four-neutron-no-proton-particle","title":{"rendered":"Physicists say they\u2019ve finally confirmed the existence of a \u2018four neutron-no proton\u2019 particle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/physicists-say-theyve-finally-confirmed-the-existence-of-a-four-neutron-no-proton-particle.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Physicists have found the most convincing signs of a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tetraneutron#cite_note-cierjacks65-1\">tetraneutron<\/a> \u2014 a four neutron-no proton particle \u2014 to date, adding weight to the possibility that the hypothetical particle really does exist. According to theory, this highly elusive particle cluster is impossible, because of how unstable lone neutrons are, but scientists in Japan say they\u2019ve spotted its signature during recent experiments.<\/p>\n<p>While the results need to be replicated independently before we can truly say the fabled tetraneutron exists, if other teams can confirm its existence, we\u2019re going to have to make some serious changes to current understanding of nuclear forces. \u201cIt would be something of a sensation,\u201d nuclear theorist Peter Schuck from France\u2019s National Centre for Scientific Research, who wasn\u2019t involved in the discovery, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/physicists-find-signs-four-neutron-nucleus\">told Science News<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Physicists have been searching for the tetraneutron for decades, and while <a href=\"http:\/\/journals.aps.org\/pr\/abstract\/10.1103\/PhysRev.137.B345\">this 1965 paper<\/a> concluded that no evidence could be found and \u201cthe existence of tetraneutrons is most unlikely\u201d, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mssl.ucl.ac.uk\/theory\/events\/20070918\/vladimir_yershov.pdf\">four separate papers<\/a> have since reported experimental observations of the particle.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/physicists-say-they-ve-finally-confirmed-the-existence-of-a-four-neutron-no-proton-particle\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Physicists have found the most convincing signs of a tetraneutron \u2014 a four neutron-no proton particle \u2014 to date, adding weight to the possibility that the hypothetical particle really does exist. According to theory, this highly elusive particle cluster is impossible, because of how unstable lone neutrons are, but scientists in Japan say they\u2019ve spotted [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21872","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\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21872"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51053,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21872\/revisions\/51053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}