nuclear confereneces

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics The oscillations in binary neutron stars before they merge could have big implications for the insights scientists can glean from gravitational wave detection. Researchers at the University of Birmingham have demonstrated the way in which these unique vibrations, caused by the interactions between the two stars' tidal fields as they get close together, affect gravitational-wave observations. The study is published in Physical Review Letters. Taking these movements into account could make a huge difference to our understanding of the data taken by the Advanced LIGO and Virgo instruments, set up to detect gravitational waves —ripples in time and space—produced by the merging of black holes and neutron stars. The researchers aim to have a new model ready for Advanced LIGO's next observing run and even more advanced models for the next generation of Advanced LIGO instruments, called A+, which are due to begin their first observing run i...

The finding was made possible using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, which is capable of colliding gold ions at near light-speed. It led to the discovery of a new kind of quantum entanglement. The term quantum entanglement describes an invisible link that connects distant objects; no matter how far away they are in space, they affect each other. That means if two particles are entangled on a quantum level, by measuring the quantum state of one of the particles, you can immediately know the quantum state of the other, wherever it may be. For example, using a coin analogy, if one particle is "heads," scientists instantly discern that the other particle is "tails," no matter where in the universe it is. Theoretical physicist Albert Einstein once dismissed the phenomenon of quantum entanglement as "spooky action at a distance," but Daniel Brandenburg, co-author of the study and a professor of physic...

International Conference on Nuclear Physics People have been complaining about “ fake news ” since at least the late 1800s, according to Merriam-Webster. Yet there is something new about our current malaise. In national political and civil discourse, disagreement over facts appears to be greater than ever. In a recent report for the non-partisan RAND Corporation, we call the problem “ Truth Decay ” and present evidence that the disputes over facts and reasoned analyses of facts are worse today than in previous eras in our nation’s history. Are major cities experiencing growing or declining violent crime rates? Has widespread illegal voting occurred or is that a bunch of hooey? Do immigrants contribute their fair share to the economy or do they overburden it? These are just a few examples of the fractures riddling American public life that persist or are worsening despite the availability of reliable data to provide solid answers. Until now, little empirical research has examined the c...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics Thinking of X-rays might trigger memories of broken bones or dental check-ups. But this extremely energetic light can show us more than just our bones: it is also used to study the molecular world, even biochemical reactions in real-time . One issue, though, is that researchers have never been able to study a single atom with X-rays. Until now. Scientists have been able to characterize a single atom using X-rays . Not only they were able to distinguish the type of atoms they were seeing (there were two different ones), but they also managed to study the chemical behavior these atoms were showing. “Atoms can be routinely imaged with scanning probe microscopes, but without X-rays, one cannot tell what they are made of. We can now detect exactly the type of a particular atom, one atom-at-a-time, and can simultaneously measure its chemical state,” senior author Professor Saw Wai Hla, from the University of Ohio and the Argonne National Labo...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics   One of the pillars of our understanding of gravity is the assumption that all particles, regardless of their mass, move in a gravitational field along the same trajectories at the same rate. The first experiments to test this principle were carried out by Galileo Galilei at the end of the 16th century, when he dropped balls made of different materials and weights from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy, confirming they all reached the Earth’s surface at the same time. “It is a result of numerous experiments that the trajectory of a freely falling body is independent of its internal structure and composition,” said Vyacheslav Emelyanov, professor of theoretical physics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, in an email. “Accordingly, all bodies fall down to the Earth with the same acceleration. This result is known as the universality of free fall.” The universality principle became an integral part of Ne...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics Researchers at the University of Washington have detected atomic “breathing,” or mechanical vibration between atom layers, which could help encode and transmit quantum information. They also created an integrated device that manipulates these atomic vibrations and light emissions, advancing quantum technology development. Scientists at the University of Washington have found a way to detect atomic “breathing,” the mechanical oscillation between two atomic layers, by watching the specific light these atoms radiate when excited by a laser. The sound of this atomic “breathing” could assist researchers in encoding and delivering quantum data. The researchers also developed a device that could serve as a new type of building block for quantum technologies, which are widely anticipated to have many future applications in fields such as computing, communications, and sensor development. Previously, the team had studied a quantum-level quasipa...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics Scientists at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences propose that the Higgs boson may interact with ‘new physics’ via decay into exotic particles, according to ‘Hidden Valley’ models. These models suggest that future particle accelerators could observe this exotic decay, potentially paving the way for understanding new physics beyond our current Standard Model. It may be that the famous Higgs boson, co-responsible for the existence of masses of elementary particles, also interacts with the world of the new physics that has been sought for decades. If this were indeed to be the case, the Higgs should decay in a characteristic way, involving exotic particles. At the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow, it has been shown that if such decays do indeed occur, they will be observable in successors to the LHC currently being designed. When talking about the ‘hidden valley’, our f...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics Symmetry is a tidy and attractive idea that falls apart in our untidy universe . Indeed, since the 1960s, some kind of broken symmetry has been required to explain why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe—why, that is, that any of this exists at all. But pinning down the source behind this existential symmetry violation, even finding proof of it, has been impossible. Yet in a new paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, University of Florida astronomers have found the first evidence of this necessary violation of symmetry at the moment of creation. The UF scientists studied a whopping million trillion three-dimensional galactic quadruplets in the universe and discovered that the universe at one point preferred one set of shapes over their mirror images. This idea, known as parity symmetry violation, points to an infinitesimal period in our universe's history when the laws of physics were dif...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics Neutrons, subatomic particles found in every atom except hydrogen, are used in scientific research for nondestructive analysis of materials through a method called neutron scattering. Discovered in 1932 and naturally present due to cosmic rays and Earth’s radioactivity, neutrons’ contributions have extended to diverse fields, including archaeology. Notably, the Department of Energy has supported breakthroughs in neutron science, leading to advancements in states of matter, vaccine development, quantum materials, superconductivity, and various technological applications. Neutrons are subatomic particles, with a neutral charge and slightly more mass than protons, found in the nucleus of every atom except hydrogen. When not confined in a nucleus, they are known as “free” neutrons and are generated by nuclear fission and fusion. Neutrons have significant applications in numerous research fields, including medicine, materials, and others. Ne...

International Conference on Nuclear Physics There is a lot of speculation about the end of the universe. Humans love a good ending after all. We know that the universe started with the Big Bang and it has been going for almost 14 billion years. But how the curtain call of the cosmos occurs is not certain yet. There are, of course, hypothetical scenarios: the universe might continue to expand and cool down until it reaches absolute zero, or it might collapse back onto itself in the so-called Big Crunch . Among the alternatives to these two leading theories is "vacuum decay", and it is spectacular – in an end-of-everything kind of way.   While the heat death hypothesis has the end slowly coming and the Big Crunch sees a reversal of the universe's expansion at some point in the future, the vacuum decay requires that one spot of the universe suddenly transforms into something else. And that would be very bad news. There is a field that spreads across the universe called the H...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics Scientists from the University of Surrey and the FRIB Laboratory at MSU teamed up to explore the origin of aluminum-26, a rare isotope that offers a window into dying stars. Their findings, “Exploiting Isospin Symmetry to Study the Role of Isomers in Stellar Environments,” were published in Physical Review Letters.   Aluminum-26 provides rare insight into processes in stars. It decays into magnesium-26, which emits a characteristic gamma ray observable with satellites. Magnesium-26 is detectable in presolar grains of material from stars that existed before the sun. The composition of these grains carries the fingerprints of their parent stars. The destruction rate of aluminum-26 by capturing a proton is critical for interpreting the amount of magnesium-26 observed in the universe. This research showed that the destruction of aluminum-26 by proton capture on the long-lived state is eight times less frequent than previously estimated...