{"id":245471,"date":"2026-10-16T01:34:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T06:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/new-spectroscopy-method-enables-direct-comparisons-of-nuclear-sizes-across-heavy-elements"},"modified":"2026-10-16T01:34:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T06:34:16","slug":"new-spectroscopy-method-enables-direct-comparisons-of-nuclear-sizes-across-heavy-elements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/new-spectroscopy-method-enables-direct-comparisons-of-nuclear-sizes-across-heavy-elements","title":{"rendered":"New spectroscopy method enables direct comparisons of nuclear sizes across heavy elements"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-spectroscopy-method-enables-direct-comparisons-of-nuclear-sizes-across-heavy-elements.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The size of a nucleus (nuclear charge radius) is an important physical quantity that reflects the arrangement of protons and neutrons within the nucleus. Particularly in deformed nuclei, such as those of rare-earth elements, examining changes in the charge radius can deepen our understanding of nuclear structure and nuclear deformation.<\/p>\n<p>Until now, electron scattering experiments, muon atomic spectroscopy and laser spectroscopy of neutral atoms and singly charged ions have been used to measure nuclear radii; however, it has not been easy to directly compare different elements.<\/p>\n<p>For lutetium (Lu) and ytterbium (Yb), evaluations based on past experiments had presented an anomalous trend not observed in other rare-earth elements: The nucleus of lutetium, which has an odd number of protons, is larger than that of the adjacent even-proton nucleus. This had remained an unsolved problem for many years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The size of a nucleus (nuclear charge radius) is an important physical quantity that reflects the arrangement of protons and neutrons within the nucleus. Particularly in deformed nuclei, such as those of rare-earth elements, examining changes in the charge radius can deepen our understanding of nuclear structure and nuclear deformation. Until now, electron scattering experiments, [\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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245471","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=245471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}