Scientists have found out the exact lifetime of a neutron; more than two years and 40 million elementary particles were spent on the measurement

An international group of engineers led by scientists from Indiana University (Bloomington), issued a statement that they were able to perform the world's most accurate measurement of the time of existence neutron. So, according to the calculations, the "life" of a neutron is only 877.75 seconds (a deviation of - / + 0.28 seconds).

New scientific work and its results

A group of physicists working on the project UCNtau, stated that they were able to carry out the most accurate measurement (at the current moment) of the neutron's "life". According to laboratory experiments, the "life" of a neutron is 877,75-/+ 0,28 seconds, which is approximately equal to 14 minutes and 38 seconds.

As scientists emphasize, their measurement is twice as accurate as the previous ones. In fact, such a refined measurement is very important for understanding the processes taking place in the first minutes after the Big Bang.

How the "life" of a neutron was measured

The neutron is one of the "building blocks" of which all matter is built. It belongs to heavy particles and in fact is a neutral analogue of a proton (which has a positive charge). In this case, the neutron is able to exist for a long time outside the composition of the nucleus. But after about 15 minutes, it decays into a proton, an electron and an antineutrino.

Until the last experiment, scientists tried to measure the decay time of a neutron in two ways:

1. The "Bunch" method - showed the result in 887.7 - / + 2.2 seconds.

2. The Bottle Method - showed the result in 878.5 - / + 0.8 seconds.

This discrepancy did not give the scientists peace of mind. After all, engineers need a relatively accurate number in order to include it in the most complex equations, with the help of these they try to describe the Universe itself.

In order to clarify the time, the scientists decided to use a new measurement method.

So an experiment was carried out at the Los Alamos National Laboratory UCNtau, which in fact is a logical development of the "Bottles" method, called the "bath" method.

In previous experiments, scientists placed free neutrons in a container shaped like a bottle (by the way, hence the name). After that, a certain amount of time is expected, and then the counting of the elements remaining in the container begins.

In the new work, scientists placed neutrons (cooled to almost absolute zero) in a "bath", in which they were suspended in space due to the action of thousands of magnets.

After 30-90 minutes, the engineers counted the remaining neutrons and thus calculated the average time of their "life".

Using this method, scientists calculated about 40 million neutrons, and it took two years of work.

Based on the results of the work done, scientists have established that the existence of a neutron is equal to 14 minutes and 37.75 seconds. In this case, the measurement error was only 0,039%.

Scientists have shared the results of the work done on the pages of the journal Physical Review Letters.

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