Inscribed on an Italian family’s 15th century coat of arms and decorating an ancient Japanese shrine, the Borromean rings are symbolically potent. Remove one ring from the trio of linked circles and the other two fall apart. It’s only when all three are entwined that the structure holds. The rings have represented the concepts of unity, the Christian Holy Trinity and even certain exotic atomic nuclei.
A rare variety, or isotope, of lithium has a nucleus that is made of three conjoined parts. Lithium-11’s nucleus is separated into a main cluster of protons and neutrons flanked by two neutrons, which form a halo around the core. Remove any one
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