Number 147 (Story #3), October 13, 1993 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein PROTON HALOES have been observed around several nuclei. Analogous to the neutron haloes around nuclei such as lithium-11 (Update 115), a proton halo consists of weakly attached protons lying outside a more densely-grouped core nucleus. Scientists at the University of Osaka and the University of Tokyo found boron-8 to be such a nucleus; measurements of the nuclear quadrupole moment suggested that a two-proton halo lay at an average radius of 2.9 fm outside a core nucleus (consisting of three protons and three neutrons) with a radius of 2.2 fm. Scientists using the ISOLDE facility at CERN have studied the properties of proton haloes in neon-17. In a related development, a Russian-Korean-Japanese team at the RIKEN lab in Japan has observed evidence for the existence of helium-10 which, with two protons and eight neutrons, should have a prominent neutron halo. (New Scientist, 2 Oct.)