The Pitch Drop Experiments vs Xenon-124
The Slowest Things on Earth
📫𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐅𝐁 𝐏𝐚𝐠𝐞:
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🎬𝐈𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨𝐬 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐬:
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Pexel
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory ( • Dark Matter Hunt with LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) )
📚𝐃𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐝'𝐬 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬
📕 𝗪𝗲𝗶𝗿𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝗵𝘀: 𝗔𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗱𝗴𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗜𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗕𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱
(https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Maths-Ag...)
📙 𝗪𝗲𝗶𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝗵𝘀: 𝗔𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗱𝗴𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲
(https://www.amazon.com/Weirder-Maths-...)
📗 𝗪𝗲𝗶𝗿𝗱𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝗵𝘀: 𝗔𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻
(https://www.amazon.com/Weirdest-Maths...)
** The kindle versions are available
*** For more details : http://weirdmaths.com/
📄𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻:
Among the longest experiments ever carried out, and one that’s still running, is also the most boring because hardly anything ever happens. It started in 1927 when Thomas Parnell, the first professor of physics at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, heated a sample of pitch (a derivative of tar) and poured it into a glass funnel with a sealed stem.
Three years were allowed for the pitch to settle, then, in 1930, the sealed stem was cut. From that date on the pitch has slowly dripped out of the funnel – so slowly that, up to the present time, only nine drops have fallen. The last one fell in April 2014, and for the first time was captured on camera.
The experiment stands in a display cabinet in the foyer of the Department of Physics at the University of Queensland demonstrating for all to see the fact that pitch, though it feels like a solid and is brittle enough to smash with a hammer, is really a fluid of very high viscosity, about 100 billion times that of water.
A similar experiment, at Aberystwyth University in Wales, was recently found to have been running since 1914, predating the Queensland set-up by 13 years. But its pitch is stiffer and, even after a century, has failed to bear fruit. In fact, it’s only just entered the stem of its funnel and is unlikely to produce its first drip for at least another 1,200 years.
If that seems mind-numbingly slow, it’s nothing compared to another process that scientists have found. Xenon-124 is a radioactive isotope of the element xenon, a rare and highly unreactive gas. The half-life of xenon-124 – the time taken for half of the atoms in a collection of the isotope to decay – is about a trillion times longer than the present age of the universe. It’s the slowest process ever witnessed by direct observation.
You may be wondering how something that takes on average about 18 sextillion years to happen could ever be detected. It came about as a by-product of the search for another elusive aspect of nature: dark matter.
The XENON1T dark-matter detector lies beneath 1,400 meters of rock in the largest underground research facility in the world, located in the Gran Sasso an Monti della Laga National Park, about 120 kilometers from Rome.
The detector contains 3.2 metric tons of xenon, including a small amount of the Xe-124 isotope. Although in any sample of a radioactive substance the average time for a decay to happen is given by the half-life, nuclear decay is a random process and some decays will happen much faster.
In fact, over a period of a year, the team at XENON1T detected the energy release from the decay of 126 Xe-124 atoms, a measurement that allowed them to calculate the isotope’s incredibly long half-life.
#pitch_drop_experiment #xenon_124 #slowest_things