Pear-Shaped Nuclei Atoms

Atoms Have Pear-Shaped NucleiSome 

Tia Ghose, LiveScience Staff Writer

Date: 08 May 2013 Time: 12:45 PM ET

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Scientists have found some atoms have pear-shaped nuclei, rather than the spherical or football-shaped ones. Here, a representation of the radium-224 nucleus in the x, z plane, with the colors as the y-axis scale. CREDIT: LP Gaffney  View full size image

A few heavy, unstable atoms have pear-shaped nuclei, research suggests.

The lopsided nuclei, described today (May 8) in the journal Nature, could be good candidates for researchers looking for new types of physics beyond the reigning explanation for the bits of matter that make up the universe (called the Standard Model), said study author Peter Butler, a physicist at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom./.../