The huge effective section of the zirconium-88

In 2019 an experiment related to the zirconian isotope-88 (88Zr), and its subsequent analysis, surprised the scientific community by observing that its effective section of capture of low-energy neutrons was thousands of times greater than predicted by theoretical models. The analysis led to extrapolation of an effective neutron capture section for a wider range of energies, suggesting a value two orders of magnitude higher than previously measu…