News tagged with isotopes
Low-Budget Fusion Reactor Could Generate Energy within a Decade
(PhysOrg.com) -- Currently, most nuclear fusion power plants are large, expensive projects that will take decades to benefit from. But a startup company in Vancouver, Canada, called General Fusion is taking ...
Aug 04, 2009 |
4.5 / 5 (59) |
57
New type of nuclear fission discovered
(PhysOrg.com) -- Nuclear fission, or the splitting of a heavy nucleus, usually results in symmetrical fragments of the same mass. Physicists attribute the few known examples of fission that is asymmetric to ...
Dec 06, 2010 |
4.7 / 5 (52) |
79
|
High-performance plasmas may make reliable, efficient fusion power a reality
In the quest to produce nuclear fusion energy, researchers from the DIII-D National Fusion Facility have recently confirmed long-standing theoretical predictions that performance, efficiency and reliability ...
Nov 02, 2009 |
4.7 / 5 (49) |
48
Radioactive decay rates vary with the sun's rotation: research
Radioactive decay rates, thought to be unique physical constants and counted on in such fields as medicine and anthropology, may be more variable than once thought.
Aug 31, 2010 |
4.5 / 5 (41) |
40
|
New findings could sway thought on climate change
(PhysOrg.com) -- A newly published paper written by a University of Nebraska-Lincoln researcher and his team could influence the way scientists think about global warming and its effects.
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Oct 20, 2010 |
4.4 / 5 (37) |
142
|
Strange Antihyperparticle Created
(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists, including nine from UC Davis, working at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory recently created some strange matter not seen since just after the Big Bang -- an "antihypertriton" ...
Mar 30, 2010 |
4.8 / 5 (33) |
4
|
Six new isotopes of the superheavy elements discovered
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has detected six isotopes, never seen before, of the superheavy elements 104 through 114. Starting ...
Oct 26, 2010 |
4.8 / 5 (29) |
7
|
Researchers at NIF moving closer to fusion ignition point
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the U.S. National Ignition Facility (NIF) report that they are growing ever closer to reaching the ignition point with their laser generated nuclear fusion project. The facility, ...
Sep 13, 2011 |
4.4 / 5 (29) |
88
|
The Earth and Moon formed later than previously thought
The Earth and Moon were created as the result of a giant collision between two planets the size of Mars and Venus. Until now it was thought to have happened when the solar system was 30 million years old or ...
Jun 07, 2010 |
4.4 / 5 (28) |
26
|
New finding may hold key to Gaia hypothesis of Earth as living organism
(Phys.org) -- Is Earth really a sort of giant living organism as the Gaia hypothesis predicts? A new discovery made at the University of Maryland may provide a key to answering this question. This key of sulfur ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
May 15, 2012 |
3.3 / 5 (32) |
164
|
Proton's party pals may alter its internal structure
A recent experiment at the DOE's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has found that a proton's nearest neighbors in the nucleus of the atom may modify the proton's internal structure.
Nov 18, 2009 |
4.6 / 5 (22) |
9
Paleoecologists suggest mass extinction due to huge methane release
(PhysOrg.com) -- Micha Ruhl and colleagues from the University of Copenhagen's Nordic Center for Earth Evolution have published a paper in Science where they contend that the mass extinction that occurred at the ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Jul 22, 2011 |
4.4 / 5 (21) |
32
|
The rise of oxygen caused Earth's earliest ice age
(PhysOrg.com) -- Geologists may have uncovered the answer to an age-old question - an ice-age-old question, that is. It appears that Earth's earliest ice ages may have been due to the rise of oxygen in Earth's ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
May 07, 2009 |
4.6 / 5 (20) |
6
Mars breakthrough: Scientists uncover red planet's hot and steamy secrets
(PhysOrg.com) -- An analysis of Martian meteorites has led scientists to believe that Mars was molten for up to 100 million years after it formed, thwarting the evolution of early life on the planet.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Jul 21, 2009 |
4.5 / 5 (20) |
3
Canadian firm bids to commercialize fusion reactor
In the race against world governments and the wealthiest companies to commercialize a nuclear fusion reactor, a small, innovative Canadian firm is hoping to bottle and sell the sun's energy.
Technology / Energy & Green Tech
Nov 30, 2011 |
4 / 5 (21) |
79
Isotope
Isotopes (Greek isos = "equal", tópos = "site, place") are any of the different types of atoms (nuclides) of the same chemical element, each having a different atomic mass (mass number). Isotopes of an element have nuclei with the same number of protons (the same atomic number) but different numbers of neutrons. Therefore, isotopes of the same element have different mass numbers (number of nucleons).
A nuclide is any particular atomic nucleus with a specific atomic number Z and mass number A; it is equivalently an atomic nucleus with a specific number of protons and neutrons. Collectively, all the isotopes of all the elements form the set of nuclides. The distinction between the terms isotope and nuclide has somewhat blurred, and they are often used interchangeably. If they are to be distinguished in use, isotope is better used in its original sense, when referring to several different nuclides of the same chemical element. Nuclide is a later and more generic term, and is used when referencing to only one type of nucleus, and may also be used to refer to several types of nuclei of different elements. For example, it is better to say that an element such as fluorine consists of one stable nuclide rather than that it has one stable isotope, because the latter word is usually reserved to refer to more than one nuclide. On the other hand, carbon can be correctly said to have two stable isotopes, and fluorine to have several radioactive isotopes.
Isotopes and nuclides are specified by the name of the particular element, implicitly giving the atomic number, followed by a hyphen and the mass number (e.g. helium-3, carbon-12, carbon-13, iodine-131 and uranium-238). In symbolic form, the number of nucleons is denoted as a superscripted prefix to the chemical symbol (e.g. 3He, 12C, 13C, 131I and 238U).
About 339 nuclides occur naturally on Earth, of which 256 (about 75%) are stable (or, to be careful, have never been observed to decay; this note is necessary because many "stable" isotopes are predicted to be radioactive with very long half-lives). Counting the radioactive nuclides not found in nature that have been created artificially, more than 3100 nuclides are currently known.
For more information about Isotope, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
