• Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    The interesting part for me is not that they created oxygen 28 but that when created it behaved completely differently than they expected from their current theory. Stable vs emitting 4 neutrons to become oxygen 24.

    Any experiment that ends with “that is not what we expected” is a source of new inquiry.

  • Synthead@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I think it’s amusing how news sites always have to post a photo for stuff that isn’t something you’d have a photo for. That’s how you end up with:

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      I assume it would be fine and you would be able to metabolize it, although possibly you would get a teensy bit of massively irradiated.

      After all you can process carbon-14 just fine.

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Humans can actually breathe all gases.

      Very few can be breathed a second time though.

  • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    To me the expectation that Oxygen-28 would be stable was naive. If they had a model that said it would, I would have looked very askance at that model for one very simple reason: Oxygen-28 has never been observed in nature. If it hasn’t ever been observed before that’s a very strong clue it has a very short half-life.

    • El Barto@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You can’t just call scientists studying and doing research on this for years naive.

      Just because something was never observed in nature doesn’t mean it’s not possible.

      For millions of years regular oxygen didn’t even exist!

    • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      There are a bunch of materials we haven’t seen in nature, but which are synthesizable, even without a very short half-life.