Plutonium-244: Confirmation as an Extinct Radioactivity
- 21 May 1971
- journal article
- other
- Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Science
- Vol. 172 (3985) , 837-840
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.172.3985.837
Abstract
The mass spectrum of xenon from spontaneous fission in a laboratory sample of plutonium-244 is precisely what meteoriticists predicted it would be; this discovery completes a web of proof that this nuclide is a bona fide extinct radioactivity of galactic origin, that r-process nucleosynthesis was ongoing in the galaxy at the time of the birth of the sun, and that the early meteoritic abundances of plutonium-244, heretofore tentative, can be utilized with confidence in models for the chronology of galactic nucleosynthesis. The search for an explanation for anomalous fission-like xenon in carbonaceous chondrites can now be narrowed.Keywords
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