Atomic Disguise Makes Helium Look Like Hydrogen 127
An anonymous reader writes "In a feat of modern-day alchemy, atom tinkerers have fooled hydrogen atoms into accepting a helium atom as one of their own, reports New Scientist. Donald Fleming of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and colleagues managed to disguise a helium atom as a hydrogen atom by replacing one of its orbiting electrons with a muon, which is far heavier than an electron. The camouflaged atom behaves chemically like hydrogen, but has four times the mass of normal hydrogen, allowing predictions for how atomic mass affects reaction rates to be put to the test."
Super cool (Score:5, Insightful)
This is super cool, but less for the kinetic isotope effect (KIE) studies and more for the muon-electron substitution. We've compared isotope masses with reaction rates using deuterium and tritium before, so using "H-4" and "H-5" is nice for extended validation, but not unexpected. The muonium is pretty bad-ass, though.
Rules for posting 'Woooosh' (Score:4, Insightful)
Rule #1: the joke has to be funny, at least funnier than the explanation, which is not the case here.