To really understand the mundane world we live in we must also understand matter at the edge of the nuclear landscape.

Computational researchers have contributed to this understanding with an intensive simulation of the short-lived oxygen-23 isotope.

Working with colleagues at the University of Tennessee and the University of Oslo in Norway, the team helped overturn a decade-old misconception about how this isotope is put together.

Their work is discussed in a recent edition of the journal Physical Review C.