DaveE said:
OK, beyond the idea that discovery is good, because we may be surprised, can someone explain in layman's terms why we care?
I'm not criticizing, I don't know enough to do that. It's genuine curiosity. Who was waiting for this data? Why was this a funding priority compared to other DOE stuff?
All good questions. The National Science Foundation (NSF) and US DOE Office of Science provided funding (they are sponsors). The information is distributed to a variety of interested parties.
Previous work produced
192Hf,
191Hf, and
189Lu using
198Pt
61+ into a Be target with energy of 85 MeV/u. "A novel approach was developed to measure cross sections when working with multiple charge states of high-Z fragments." The experiment used the Coupled Cyclotron Facility (CCF) at the NSF’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) at MSU.
https://nscl.msu.edu/public/tour/NSCL Brochure 2015.pdf
FRIB uses a linear accelerator.
The latest experiment (see the OP) used an ion energy of 186 MeV/u, and there are plans to go to even high energy. The Pt ions had charges of 66+, 67+ and 68+. The beam "was accelerated through the three segments of the FRIB linear accelerator."
The experiments provide data to compare with theory, e.g., cross-section models, and apparently, some motivation is to elucidate possible reactions in the r-process in stellar nucleosynthesis.
Aside from that, various articles indicate that there is no practical use for such isotopes, since they decay very rapidly.
In the summary of the recently reported work, the results yielded "the discovery of five previously unobserved neutron-rich nuclides in a region that approaches the r-process path. The experiment was the first new-isotope search carried out at the recently completed Facility for Rare Isotope Beams and already demonstrates the impressive capabilities and new science opportunities that are and will become available as the facility evolves toward its full beam intensity of 400 kW. It also indicates that neutron pickup reactions, leading to fragments with more neutrons than the primary beam, occur in the
intermediate energy regime and have the prospect to reach further into the unknown.
The unique capabilities of FRIB, including very intense primary beams at energies exceeding those that were available at NSCL, make it an ideal facility for exploring the region around neutron number N ¼ 126 and beyond. Researchers at FRIB can utilize these reactions to produce, identify, and study the properties of new isotopes, contributing to advancements in nuclear physics, astrophysics, and our understanding of the fundamental properties of matter."
Edit/update: I forgot to post the link
https://frib.msu.edu/users/beams