Rutherfordium has relatively stable isotopes (up to 48 min) [1] and is definitely agreed to exist. This article is about extremely neutron-deficient isotopes and their excited states.
There are two forces fighting with each other: Many protons repel each other with their positve electric charge. But they also attract each other with their strong force. It's complicated but if you simplify you could say too large nuclei tend not to hold together.
If you add electric neutral neutrons you have more strong force but the electrical repulsion doesn't increase. So if you have more neutrons, you might have larger nuclei.
They measured what happens if some element's isotope has too few neutrons. They were surprised about the extremely short half-times. From that they estimated on the opposite side (again simplifying here!) that very large nuclei with a lot of neutrons could be stabler than known up to today.
So: on one side (few neutrons) extremely unstable, so on the other side (more neutrons) stabler than expected?
That's what I understood from the article. I have no idea.
mppm|1 year ago
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutherfordium
_nalply|1 year ago
If you add electric neutral neutrons you have more strong force but the electrical repulsion doesn't increase. So if you have more neutrons, you might have larger nuclei.
They measured what happens if some element's isotope has too few neutrons. They were surprised about the extremely short half-times. From that they estimated on the opposite side (again simplifying here!) that very large nuclei with a lot of neutrons could be stabler than known up to today.
So: on one side (few neutrons) extremely unstable, so on the other side (more neutrons) stabler than expected?
That's what I understood from the article. I have no idea.
squiffsquiff|1 year ago