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Work by scientists at the Oak Ridge and Los Alamos National Laboratories has led to an explanation of the "missing" magnetism of plutonium. Plutonium had been predicted to be magnetic by conventional theories, which successfully predicted the element's structural properties, but its magnetism had never been observed experimentally. Until now:
Finally, after seven decades, this scientific mystery on plutonium's "missing" magnetism has been resolved. Using neutron scattering, researchers from the Department of Energy's Los Alamos and Oak Ridge (ORNL) national laboratories have made the first direct measurements of a unique characteristic of plutonium's fluctuating magnetism. In a recent paper in the journal Science Advances, Marc Janoschek from Los Alamos, the paper's lead scientist, explains that plutonium is not devoid of magnetism, but in fact its magnetism is just in a constant state of flux, making it nearly impossible to detect.
"Plutonium sort of exists between two extremes in its electronic configuration—in what we call a quantum mechanical superposition," Janoschek said. "Think of the one extreme where the electrons are completely localized around the plutonium ion, which leads to a magnetic moment. But then the electrons go to the other extreme where they become delocalized and are no longer associated with the same ion anymore."
Original Submission
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @11:31AM
you know i really like to call "bullshit" when ever neutrons are involved.
if using neutron pretty much anything is possible. it's like a joker card.
for example you can use neutrons to blow up balloons for your kids happy birthday party:
"liberate" some neutron (half-life 12 min), direct them onto some (stable, solid) iodine
(picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sample_of_iodine.jpg) [wikipedia.org] turning it into unstable iodine,
which then decays into (gaseous) xeon.
so ladle some iodine into empty balloons, close them up, then place them near a neutron source ...
after a week or so they will be inflated and ready for the party.
neutrons? all rubbish!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @11:39AM
you mean if all neutron involving experiments are "real" then the results/records should be written down on neutron irradiated material?
let's see how "real" the results look like after a few years of decaying neutron paper -aka- phantom paper?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @07:07PM
Interesting. Can you go into more detail on why you think neutrons mess up experiments?