Scientists discover new type of oxygen with strange properties

Scientists in Japan have created two new forms of oxygen that have unusual properties compared to popular theories about atomic structure.

Oxygen-28 , one of two new isotopes recently created in the lab, is the heaviest isotope of oxygen we know of . It also behaves strangely.

Both of these isotopes are forms of oxygen, which always have eight protons in each atom. (Illustration: Sputnik)

Researcher Yosuke Kondo at the Tokyo Institute of Technology explained in the August 30 issue of the journal Nature that her team exposed several elements to 'extreme conditions' to create oxygen-28 and the slightly smaller isotope oxygen-27.

Both of these isotopes are forms of oxygen, which always have 8 protons in each atom. However, an atom can have any number of neutrons without changing its chemical properties.

Previously, the most neutrons ever seen in an oxygen nucleus was 18. This isotope is called oxygen-26 because it also has 8 protons inside.

To create the new oxygen isotopes, Kondo's team used the RIKEN Radioisotope Beam Array in Saitama, Japan. They fired a beam of calcium-48 at a beryllium target, which broke apart calcium fragments and created lighter atoms. Among those created were atoms of fluorine-29, which has nine protons and 20 neutrons and sits next to oxygen on the periodic table.

The researchers then took this fluorine-29 atom and broke it together with a liquid hydrogen atom to turn the fluorine into oxygen.

As a result, they created two different atoms using this process : oxygen-28 with 20 neutrons and oxygen-27 with 19 neutrons.

What happened next left scientists baffled, according to the paper. Although they thought oxygen-28 would be stable, it instead decayed and underwent spontaneous neutron emission.

That means it quickly gives up four neutrons and becomes oxygen-24. Oxygen-27 also quickly decays, losing three neutrons to become oxygen-24.

Researchers initially believed the two new forms of oxygen were stable based on a mathematical relationship governing the 'shells' of particles in the nucleus, with multiples of 8 and 20 considered 'magic' numbers due to their high stability properties. Kondo's team expected oxygen-28 to be stable because its isotope number is 'doubly magic'.

For example, the form of oxygen we breathe here on Earth is oxygen-16, which is a multiple of 8 and extremely stable.