Just 10 days after beginning its first trial operations, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has announced that scientists operating its new High Intensity heavy-ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF) have successfully detected the “extremely rare” hafnium-153 isotope. To search for the rare hafnium-153 isotope, HIAF’s Booster Ring (Bring) delivered a primary beam of bismuth-209 onto agraphite target. Critically, the team’s detection was independently replicated at Japan’s Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory (RIBF) at RIKEN, which also reported the observation of hafnium-153. The team said the dual detections provide mutual confirmation and “further highlight the significance of this isotope in nuclear physics research.” The study “Discovery of isotope hafnium-153 near the proton drip line via isochronous mass spectrometry: extending the nuclear landscape with HIAF” was published in Science Bulletin.