Experimental Evidences of Spontaneous and Low-Energy Induced Emission of Heavy Ions from Even-Even Heavy Nuclei

摘要

During the course of an experiment to measure the spontaneous fission half-life of exp 238 U, it became evident that the exp 238 U is also a spontaneous emitter of heavy ions in the mass range from 20 up to 70. Other experimental facts reported in literature, such as the systematic observation of an abnormal isotopic abundance of neon and argon found in radioactive minerals, and the small etch pit track-diameters found recently in a very ancient man-made uranium-glass, seem to support our findings. Besides, a set of improved experiments with 'visual' detectors carried out in our laboratory have shown that the emission of such heavy ions from uranium can also occur with low-energy incident photons and particles. Some experimental results which led to the conclusion that some even-even heavy nuclei are emitters of heavy-mass fragments other than ordinary fission fragments, are discussed. (Atomindex citation 09:364755)