Re:Ancient stars made extraordinarily heavy elements, resear...
by saalweachter on Friday December 08, 2023 @05:05PM
(#38575217)
I think he's referring to the way that eg lawrencium has a half-life that ~increases with the neutrons in the isotopes we've produced, from seconds for Lr-256 to hours for Lr-266.
It isn't crazy to postulate, as a layman, that if we synthesized Lr-276, say, it might have a longer half-life.
(Not that we expect that pattern to continue indefinitely, but still, have we discovered the most stable isotope of lawrencium yet?)
All of these isotopes are neutron-heavy. Lawrencium 261 has 103 protons and 158 neutrons, for example.
In fact, the only stable isotopes with fewer neutrons than protons are helium 3 and ordinary hydrogen (protium).