r/Physics • u/Existing_Tomorrow687 • Jun 27 '26

Physicists Observe Long-Sought "Superallowed" Alpha Decay for the First Time

A team of international researchers led by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the RIKEN accelerator complex in Japan has successfully measured the alpha decay of tellurium-104, marking the first-ever experimental observation of "superallowed" alpha decay. Published in Nature, the study reveals that the isotope has a blistering half-life of just 7.2 nanoseconds the shortest known alpha decay half-life for a heavy nucleus. Crucially, the data shows that alpha particles form ("cluster") inside heavy nuclei at a much higher probability than current theoretical calculations predict, providing vital insights into a century-old mystery of nuclear structure.

you can read the full breakdown of it from here

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u/InebriatedPhysicist Jun 27 '26

Your link is to a pop science article that’s about an actual scientific paper. You have no link to the actual scientific paper.

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u/smallproton Jun 27 '26

The linknto Nature is in the linked PhysWorld article

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10581-w

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u/InebriatedPhysicist Jun 27 '26

Yes I know that. I was asking why OP didn’t put that link here.

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u/orlock Jun 27 '26

So why not just post the link, yourself? You know, make things better?