Feature Channels: Nuclear Physics

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A computer cluster, which switched off April 1, had a storied history in serving high-energy physics and nuclear physics experiments.

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ORNL story tips: Using ORNL’s Summit supercomputer, scientists created some of the largest virtual universes; plant-based, super-sticky material proves stickier than mussels; method to 3D print big components with metal could promise low-cost, high-quality builds with less waste; simulated small modular reactors on Summit ran more efficiently than expected.

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An international team of scientists, including researchers from the University of California San Diego, observed radioactive decay that is the rarest process ever observed in a detector and the slowest ever directly measured.

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The spin direction of protons was reversed, for the first time, using a nine-magnet device, potentially helping tease out details about protons that affect medical imaging and more.

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A precision measurement of the proton’s weak charge narrows the search for new physics.

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The world’s most advanced particle accelerator for investigating the quark structure of the atom's nucleus has just charmed physicists with a new capability. The production of charm quarks in J/ψ (J/psi) particles by CEBAF at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility confirms that the facility has expanded the realm of precision nuclear physics research with electron beams to higher energies.

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Physicists develop a universal mathematical description that suggests that proton-neutron pairs in a nucleus may explain why their associated quarks have lower average momenta than predicted.

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Diane Hatton helped navigate the winding path to success for the National Synchrotron Light Source II project at Brookhaven Lab, and will bring her experience to new endeavors at the Lab.

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Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered and characterized a new form of oxygen dubbed “featherweight oxygen” — the lightest-ever version of the familiar chemical element oxygen, with only three neutrons to its eight protons. Oxygen is one of the most abundant elements in the solar system, but oxygen-11 can be produced only in a laboratory.

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New data from the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) add detail and complexity to an intriguing puzzle that scientists have been seeking to solve: how the building blocks that make up a proton contribute to its spin. The results reveal that different flavors of antiquarks contribute differently to spin--and in a way that's opposite to those flavors' relative abundance.

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Throughout its nearly 30-year history, the VTA has contributed to the success of large-scale superconducting radiofrequency accelerators across the United States and around the world and continues to enable researchers to expand the frontiers of accelerator science and serve the needs of cutting-edge particle accelerator research facilities worldwide.

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Scientists in the Emergent Photonics Lab (EPic Lab) at the University of Sussex have made a breakthrough to a crucial element of an atomic clock - devices which could reduce our reliance on satellite mapping in the future - using cutting-edge laser beam technology. Their development greatly improves the efficiency of the lancet (which in a traditional clock is responsible for counting), by 80% - something which scientists around the world have been racing to achieve.

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An international collaboration including scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory solved a 50-year-old puzzle that explains why beta decays of atomic nuclei are slower than what is expected based on the beta decays of free neutrons. The findings, published in Nature Physics, fill a longstanding gap in physicists’ understanding of beta decay, an important process stars use to create heavier elements, and emphasize the need to include subtle effects—or more realistic physics—when predicting certain nuclear processes.

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A new study commissioned by the Southeastern Universities Research Association on the local, state and nationwide impacts of the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has found that the laboratory generated $556.9 million in output and provided labor income for 3,448 workers nationwide last year.

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Yes. Such condensates, analogous to those in carbon-12, in heavier nuclei could change how we describe certain elements.

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Fully vested in advancing nuclear technology since its inception in 1946, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory helped complete detailed analyses of what potential transitions to a new nuclear energy future might look like.

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A careful re-analysis of data taken at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has revealed a possible link between correlated protons and neutrons in the nucleus and a 35-year-old mystery. The data have led to the extraction of a universal function that describes the EMC Effect, the once-shocking discovery that quarks inside nuclei have lower average momenta than predicted, and supports an explanation for the effect. The study has been published in the journal Nature.

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Scientists from U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) national laboratories and a number of top U.S. research universities are proposing to build, within the next decade, an electron ion collider that will provide scientists with one of the best in-depth views of the interior of atomic nuclei.

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Using neutron characterization techniques a team of scientists have peered inside one of the most unique examples of wire gold, understanding for the first time the specimen's structure and possible formation process. The 263 gram, 12 centimeter tall specimen, known as the Ram's Horn, belongs to the collection of the Mineralogical and Geological Museum Harvard University (MGMH).

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A team led by Berkeley Lab scientists has gleaned new and surprising clues about the nuclear structure of an exotic form of magnesium: Mg-40.

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Scientists at TRIUMF, the Institut de Physique Nucléaire, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have for the first time accurately predicted the properties of polarized deuterium-tritium thermonuclear fusion. Their findings, described in a Nature Communications publication released today, add to our current understanding of the dynamics of nuclear fusion and may enable more accurate predictions of other thermonuclear reactions critical to nuclear science applications.

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Feature describes prototype of new device that mitigates disruption of fusion plasmas faster than the most developed techniques today.

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New simulations led by researchers working at the Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley have combined decades-old theories to provide new insight about the driving mechanisms in plasma jets that allows them to steal energy from black holes’ powerful gravitational fields and propel it far from their gaping mouths.

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Cynthia Keppel, leader of Jefferson Lab’s Halls A&C, has been honored with the APS 2019 Distinguished Lectureship Award on the Applications of Physics.

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January 2 marked the startup of the 19th year of physics operations at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a particle collider for nuclear physics research at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Physicists will conduct a series of experiments to explore innovative beam-cooling technologies and map out the conditions created by collisions at various energies.

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A group of physicists analyzing the patterns of particles emerging from collisions of small projectiles with large nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) say these patterns are triggered by quantum mechanical interactions among gluons, the glue-like particles that hold together the building blocks of the projectiles and nuclei.

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An experiment that aims to gain new insight into the force that binds all matter together has recently completed its first phase of data collection. The Gluonic Excitations Experiment, or GlueX, is designed to produce and study hybrid mesons, which are particles that are built of the same stuff as ordinary protons and neutrons: quarks bound together by the “glue” of the strong force. But unlike ordinary mesons, the glue in hybrid mesons behaves differently by actively contributing to the particles’ properties.

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Brookhaven Lab's Computational Science Initiative hosted its second hackathon on graphics processing units for accelerating scientific discovery.

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have identified in live human brains new radioactive “tracer” molecules that bind to and “light up” tau tangles, a protein associated with a number of neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease and other related dementias.

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A new detection of supersoft X-ray emissions that are clearly not powered by fusion is showing scientists that fusion is not the only way such emissions occur, according to a study published today (Dec. 3) in the journal Nature Astronomy.

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A Berkeley Lab-led team has directly measured the mass numbers of two superheavy elements: moscovium (element 115), and nihonium (element 113).

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The OARtrac® system, built by RadiaDyne and including technologies developed by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, has been awarded a 2018 R&D 100 Award by R&D Magazine.

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The Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility now has a few more fellows on campus. The American Physical Society, a professional membership society that works on behalf of the physics community, recently announced its list of 2018 fellowships.

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Laser-based ‘optical tweezers’ could levitate uranium and plutonium particles, thus allowing the measurement of nuclear recoil during radioactive decay. This technique, proposed by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, provides a new method for conducting the radioactive particle analysis essential to nuclear forensics.

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AIP Publishing has announced its selection of Daniel S. Clark, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and leader of the National Ignition Facility’s (NIF) Capsule Modeling Working Group within the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) Program, as the winner of the 2018 Ronald C. Davidson Award for Plasma Physics.

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Argonne was recently named a historic physics site by the American Physical Society in recognition of the groundbreaking work of former Argonne physicist and Nobel laureate Maria Goeppert Mayer.

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AIP Publishing has announced its selection of Daniel S. Clark, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and leader of the National Ignition Facility’s Capsule Modeling Working Group within the inertial confinement fusion Program, as the winner of the 2018 Ronald C. Davidson Award for Plasma Physics. The annual award is presented by AIP Publishing in collaboration with the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics, to recognize outstanding plasma physics research by an author published in the journal Physics of Plasmas.

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Fuel cell efficiency of hydrogen fuel cells decreases as the Nafion membrane, used to separate the anode and cathode within a fuel cell, swells as it interacts with water. Russian and Australian researchers have now shown that this Nafion separator membrane partially unwinds some of its constituent fibers, which then protrude away from the surface into the bulk water phase for hundreds of microns. Their results were published in this week’s Journal of Chemical Physics.

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists used neutrons, isotopes and simulations to “see” the atomic structure of a saturated solution and found evidence supporting one of two competing hypotheses about how ions come together to form minerals.

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In the world of computing, there’s a groundswell of excitement for what is perceived as the impending revolution in artificial intelligence. Like the industrial revolution in the 19th century and the digital revolution in the 20th, the AI revolution is expected to change the way we live and work. Now, Cristiano Fanelli aims to bring the AI revolution to nuclear physics.

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A new method enables researchers to directly observe and capture atomic motions at surfaces and interfaces in real time.

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Using ALMA, an international team of astronomers found evidence that a white dwarf and a brown dwarf collided in a short-lived blaze of glory that was witnessed on Earth in 1670 as Nova sub Capite Cygni (a New Star below the Head of the Swan), which is now known as CK Vulpeculae.

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In the world of catalytic reactions, polymers created through electropolymerization are attracting renewed attention. A group of Chinese researchers recently provided the first detailed characterization of the electrochemical properties of polyaniline and polyaspartic acid (PASP) thin films. In AIP Advances, the team used a wide range of tests to characterize the polymers, especially their capacity for catalyzing the oxidation of popularly used materials, hydroquinone and catechol.

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A select group of researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory was recently recognized for their contributions to infrastructure security and nuclear nonproliferation at the Secretary’s Honor Awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., on August 29.

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Energy innovations like wind, wave, and solar power, bio-fuels, and small modular reactors have the potential to change the world. Discover how Oregon State and NuScale Power are working to take these innovations from lab to market. Lecture is free and open to the public. Registration requested: engineering.oregonstate.edu/lecture

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Scientists at the University of Notre Dame will begin an independent study of turnout gear worn by firefighters after initial samples tested positive for fluorine.

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Click here to go directly to the DOE Science News Source

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New 3D maps of water distribution during cellular membrane fusion could lead to new treatments for diseases associated with cell fusion. Using neutron diffraction at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scientists made the first direct observations of water in lipid bilayers modeling cell membrane fusion.

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First direct measurement show how heavy particles containing a charm quark get caught up in the flow of early universe particle soup.

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The United Kingdom’s National Nuclear Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have agreed to cooperate on a wide range of nuclear energy research and development efforts that leverage both organizations’ unique expertise and capabilities.