Abstract
Fossil tracks of length ∼20 µm created by the spontaneous fission of 238U impurities were discovered in 19621 and form the basis of the well-known fission-track dating technique, which is broadly applicable to minerals and natural glasses2. Fossil tracks formed by recoil daughter nuclei released in the α decay of nuclei in the Th and U decay chains were discovered in 19673, but because of their very short ranges (<0.02 µm) have been seen only on cleavage planes of mica crystals. (Artificially produced α-recoil tracks have also been seen in albite4.) During a search for tracks of slow, supermassive magnetic monopoles in large muscovite mica crystals5,6, we have discovered a third type of natural track caused by nuclear interactions of α particles from radioactive impurities with nuclei in mica. These ‘α-interaction tracks’, with length intermediate between fission tracks and α-recoil tracks, provide a measure of mild thermal events and are valuable in simulating the appearance and stability of tracks of hypothetical monopole-nucleus bound pairs.
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Price, P., Salamon, M. Fossil tracks of α-particle interactions in minerals. Nature 320, 425–427 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1038/320425a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/320425a0
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