ISOLDE reveals fundamental property of astatine, the rarest element on Earth

A team of researchers using the ISOLDE nuclear-physics facility at CERN has measured for the first time the so-called electron affinity of the chemical element astatine, the rarest naturally occurring element on Earth. The result, described in a paper just published in Nature Communications, is important for both fundamental and applied research. As well as giving access to hitherto unknown properties of this element and allowing theoretical models to be tested, the finding is of practical inter...