Weighing superheavy atoms

This atom wieghing technology certainly is cool.

Perhaps they can detect differences in the masses of elements of identical isotopic species. The point being that excited long lived isomer states might be detectable other than the few known metastable nuclear isomers of which the Hafnium 178 m2 state has a half life of about 31 years.

Nuclear isomers may have great application for military purposes, but perhaps more significant is the potential to use such isomers for compact power sources for future manned space craft that can ply the depths of the planetary solar system, and perhaps and hopefully, one day, beyond.

The discovery and production of stable superheavy elements is an ongoing quest to which the Facility For Rare Isotope Beams being developed within the U.S. as a DOE lab might pay off in great dividends for low energy particle physics. If stable super heavies exist, can they undergo nuclear fission or be used as fission fuel? What might be the mass specific energy yield of the fission of stable super heavies? What fraction of the rest mass of any stable super heavy nuclear isomer configurations exist in the form of nuclear isomer energy that might be released without the fission or transmutation of the elemental or isotopic species involved?

These are just some of the fascinating questions that mass measuring technologies can at least aim to help address.

In short, chemistry, nuclear chemistry, and low energy particle physics is a fascinating subject with many likely additional future discoveries and applications.