Weeknotes 4
This week proved challenging. One of the most challenging parts of working on a project is dealing with people. Specifically, mentoring. It is hard work! Most of the time, it is the most rewarding…
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Is it possible for Atoms to be stable without proton and electrons but only with neutrons?
I was thinking about this for a while yesterday. I mean Neutrons are are neutral and cannot be attracted to anything. Unlike electrons and protons which are positively or negatively charged, neutrons have zero charge. So they should be stable right?
The answer is actually No!
Don’t forget the fact that all atoms have more than one neutron. Now when all the neutron’s can’t stable on their own. An assembly of neutrons cannot support a shell of electrons so they could never be part of an atom. In that sense neutrons can’t form an atomic nucleus. On the other hand, neutrons are nucleons by definition so a clump of them could be thought of as a nucleus.
The problem is that neutrons are not stable on their own. If you managed to get four of them to clump together, within minutes one of them would would emit an electron and an antineutrino leaving behind a proton. After one more neutron decay you would be left with a stable atomic nucleus (helium) but it wouldn’t be a clump of neutrons anymore.
There is only one thing that can result in a bunch of stable neutrons with no protons around, extremely high pressure and the only way to get that pressure is from the gravitational forces in a collapsing star. The result is a neutron star.
So in short, a free neutron is unstable, it decays into a proton, an electron and an antineutrino. So it is not possible to have a stable atom with just neutrons and no electrons and protons.
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