Abstract
WE have used an improved method of measuring low levels of spontaneous fission to establish limits for postulated super-heavy elements in natural materials. The apparatus has also been used to give an approximate measure of the rate of cosmic ray-induced fission of lead. Our result for lead agrees with theoretical predictions and satisfactorily explains observations of fission events in Pb glass that had previously been attributed to superheavy element decay1. Measurements on a lead target irradiated with 29 GeV protons were carried out as a comparison with the latest results of Marinov et al.2, which would have predicted 15 counts in our experiment. Our sample yielded no counts.
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GEISLER, F., PHILLIPS, P. & WALKER, R. Search for Superheavy Elements in Natural and Proton-irradiated Materials. Nature 244, 428–429 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1038/244428a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/244428a0
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