Long-sought measurement of exotic beta decay in thallium helps extract the timescale of the sun’s birth

Have you ever wondered how long it took our sun to form in its stellar nursery? An international collaboration of scientists is now closer to an answer. They succeeded in the measurement of the bound-state beta decay of fully-ionized thallium (²⁰⁵Tl⁸¹⁺) ions at the Experimental Storage Ring (ESR) of GSI/FAIR.