Using the world's rarest element to study the world's rarest force
Monday, October 29, 2012 - 10:01
in Physics & Chemistry
In September 2012 an experiment at the TRIUMPH accelerator complex reached a milestone. The FrPNC collaboration —-short hand for Francium Parity Non-conservation—-succeeded in trapping several kinds of francium, including the isotope Fr-207, which had never before been trapped. There is less than a gram of Fr at any given time in the whole earth. With a halflife of mere seconds, and existing only briefly at particle accelerators, francium is the rarest species in the periodic table of elements up to uranium.