India, June 6 -- IIT Roorkee's nuclear physics group plays a key role in the rare nuclear decay discovery published in Nature Communications.

Breakthrough also reveals first evidence of Thomas-Ehrman shift in heavy nuclei.

IIT Roorkee : IIT Roorkee played a crucial part in a multinational collaborative effort leading to the discovery of a new atomic nucleus, 188Astatine (188At). This discovery was achieved through an experiment at the Accelerator Laboratory of the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland, along with the theory developed at IIT Roorkee and Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal.

The discovery of this new atomic nucleus, 188At, is based on the rare process of a nucleus decaying by emitting a proton. With a mass number of 188, it turns...