Talk:Mirror nuclei

This article desperately needs help (or removal!). Preceding the article is an appeal to "improve" or expand it (and a request to add references or sources). However, I realize that my first attempt to do this was a bit overreaching.

Nevertheless, the term "mirror isotope" is inaccurate and misleading (as well as scientifically useless), and should be debunked (rather than promoting its use). Furthermore, in modern physics (including the RHIC lecture I attended this evening at BNL), the "mirror" notion is legitimately applied to other situations, such as "broken-mirror" symmetry of certain collisions that produce quark-gluon plasmas (or describing violations of "parity"). This incorrect use of the "mirror" to describe approximately-equal nuclear masses borders upon the mystical!

Furthermore, I argue that it does not violate NPOV for an article about "Mirror Isotope" to make clear that the word "isotope" is wrongly used and to explicitly debunk the incorrect usage. Tripodics (talk) 04:49, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

This article is wrong (2012)
A mirror nuclei is one where the number of protons of element one (Z1) equal the number of neutrons of element two (N2) and the number of protons of element two (Z2) equal the number of neutrons in element one (N1). In short, Z1=N2 and Z2=N1.

Can someone correct this article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.23.46.190 (talk) 02:44, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Additional formulas
Formula showing how the masses must be the same.

Z1 = Atomic number of first element Z2 = Atomic number of second element A1 = Atomic mass of first element A2 = Atomic mass of second element N1 = Number of neutrons in first element N2 = Number of neutrons in second element Z1 = A1 - N1 = N2 Z2 = A2 - N2 = N1

N1 = A1 - N2 A2 - N2 = A1 - N2

A2 = A1

Article Rewritten - but what is Jπ
I have rewrote the article from scratch, it could be presented a little better but the content is now correct. 92.23.46.190 (talk) 20:12, 6 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The (rewritten) article is much better, now.
 * However, the notation is unclear because Jπ is nowhere defined.


 * Please add some text to explain what is meant by J and by J^pi.
 * Tripodics (talk) 14:12, 1 October 2016 (UTC)


 * It's not my field of expertise, but these two might inspire someone:
 * Nuclear magnetic moment
 * Angular momentum operator


 * Simon de Danser (talk) 06:45, 6 June 2018 (UTC)


 * total angular momentum (usually denoted J); but doesn't mention Jπ - Rod57 (talk) 23:32, 2 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I deleted the stuff about Jπ. — Chrisahn (talk) 13:54, 3 August 2021 (UTC)