Nuclear singlet states may have lifetimes T S that exceed the conventional magnetization relaxation time T 1 by an order of magnitude. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] Applications of these states to the NMR measurements of slow molecular diffusion, chemical exchange, and the transportofhyperpolarizednuclearspinorderhavebeendemonstrated. [8][9][10][11] So far, long-lived nuclear singlet states have only been observed for proton pairs. We now demonstrate an extraordinarily long lifetime (T S ) of ∼26 min for the nuclear spin singlet of 15 N 2 -nitrous oxide (dinitrogen monoxide, N 2 O) in solution. This result has high potential importance since nitrous oxide is soluble in many important fluids such as water, oil, and blood. It is used routinely as a food additive, a gas propellant, and an anesthetic.Doubly labeled 15 N 2 O gas, purchased from CK-gas (UK), was dissolved in a degassed solution of DMSO-d 6 at a pressure of ∼3. Figure 1a.The slow relaxation of singlet states is revealed by suppressing their interconversion with the triplet states, either by using a resonant radiofrequency field [3][4][5][6] or by reducing the static magnetic field to a very low value. 1,2 The radiofrequency method is not feasible for The spin system is allowed to reach thermal equilibrium, and two strong 90°pulses with a relative phase of 90°are applied at the mean chemical shift frequency of the two 15 N sites. The delay between the pulses, τ 1 ) 0.198 ms, was chosen so that the transverse magnetization vectors of the two 15 N sites precess through 180°r elative to each other. The two pulses act as a selective 180°pulse on one of the 15 N sites and lead to a spin density operator 10 of the formwhere the two sites are denoted j and k and the selective inversion is assumed to act on site j. In this and the following equations, the subscript refers to a time point in Figure 2. The sample is transported out of the magnetic field by activating a stepper motor to wind up a string attached to the sample holder. The transport process takes τ tr ) 40 s and transports the sample into a region of low magnetic field, B low ≈ 2 mT, estimated by a Hall effect device. As shown in ref 2, slow adiabatic transport converts the population of each high-field state into that of the corresponding low-field state, leading to a density operator of the formwhere the low-field eigenstates areThe sample is left in the low-field region for a variable time τ LF . During the first few minutes, the three triplet populations equilibrate with each other on a time scale set by the relaxation constant T 1 . The density operator after several minutes in low magnetic field is therefore given approximately byThe sample is transported back into the high-field region by running the stepper motor in the opposite direction. Adiabatic transport from the density operator in eq 3 leads to