Paul Scherrer Institute precisely determines samarium-146 half-life
Published: Thursday, Aug 1st 2024, 12:20
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Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Aargau and the Australian National University have been able to determine the half-life of samarium-146 very precisely. This is a rare earth metal.
Samarium-146 has a half-life of 92 million years. This was very well confirmed by the age determinations of meteorites and lunar samples, as stated in a press release issued by the federal government and PSI on Thursday.
Since the first measurements in the 1950s, researchers have repeatedly come to contradictory conclusions about the half-life of samarium-146.
However, according to the Paul Scherrer Institute, this is a major problem in the sciences of astrophysics and geochemistry: researchers need a half-life value that is as accurate as possible in order to explain the formation of asteroids and planets or to date the age of rocks.
A team of researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen in Aargau and at the Australian National University in Canberra came to the new half-life result for samarium-146. "Our result is the most accurate to date," said Dorothea Schumann from PSI, who led the team.
According to the press release, this measurement was only possible at the PSI thanks to the Erawast initiative (Exotic Radionuclides from Accelerator Waste for Science and Technology). This is a long-term project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, which reuses radioactive waste from the accelerators at PSI for research purposes. The study on the samarium-146 half-life will be published this Thursday in the journal "Nature Scientific Reports".
The Paul Scherrer Institute is part of the ETH Domain, which also includes ETH Zurich and EPF Lausanne, as well as the research institutes Eawag, Empa and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL).
©Keystone/SDA
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