To me the expectation that Oxygen-28 would be stable was naive. If they had a model that said it would, I would have looked very askance at that model for one very simple reason: Oxygen-28 has never been observed in nature. If it hasn’t ever been observed before that’s a very strong clue it has a very short half-life.
To me the expectation that Oxygen-28 would be stable was naive. If they had a model that said it would, I would have looked very askance at that model for one very simple reason: Oxygen-28 has never been observed in nature. If it hasn’t ever been observed before that’s a very strong clue it has a very short half-life.
You can’t just call scientists studying and doing research on this for years naive.
Just because something was never observed in nature doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
For millions of years regular oxygen didn’t even exist!
There are a bunch of materials we haven’t seen in nature, but which are synthesizable, even without a very short half-life.