{"id":81054,"date":"2018-07-30T11:43:53","date_gmt":"2018-07-30T18:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/astronomers-have-made-the-first-detection-of-a-radioactive-molecule-in-space"},"modified":"2018-07-31T12:06:56","modified_gmt":"2018-07-31T19:06:56","slug":"astronomers-have-made-the-first-detection-of-a-radioactive-molecule-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/astronomers-have-made-the-first-detection-of-a-radioactive-molecule-in-space","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers Have Made The First Detection of a Radioactive Molecule in Space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/astronomers-have-made-the-first-detection-of-a-radioactive-molecule-in-space.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>After a long search, a cosmic mystery has an answer. Astronomers have made the very first unambiguous detection of a radioactive molecule in space \u2014 an isotope of aluminium, found in the heart of a rare nova.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists have long been searching for <sup>26 <\/sup>AlF \u2014 or Aluminium monofluoride \u2014 containing <sup>26 <\/sup>Al, but a direct observation has been exceptionally illusive.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve known about the presence of <sup>26 <\/sup>Al in space for decades. In 1984, NASA\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/High_Energy_Astronomy_Observatory_3\">HEAO 3 satellite<\/a> data was used to identify gamma-ray radiation originating from the <a href=\"http:\/\/adsabs.harvard.edu\/doi\/10.1086\/162632\">beta decay of the isotope<\/a>. According to these observations, there\u2019s roughly two solar masses of <sup>26 <\/sup>Al in the Milky Way.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/radioactive-molecule-aluminium-26-26al-isotope-ck-vulpeculae-nova-stellar-collision\">https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/radioactive-molecule-aluminium-...-collision<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a long search, a cosmic mystery has an answer. Astronomers have made the very first unambiguous detection of a radioactive molecule in space \u2014 an isotope of aluminium, found in the heart of a rare nova. Scientists have long been searching for 26 AlF \u2014 or Aluminium monofluoride \u2014 containing 26 Al, but a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81054","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=81054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81116,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81054\/revisions\/81116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}