nuclear confereneces

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics If it was easier to raise money, Plasmos might have a dedicated facility for testing rocket engines. Instead, the propulsion startup rented a speedboat restoration shop east of Los Angeles. There, “we managed to test something, and it was successful,” said Plasmos CEO Ali Baghchehsara. “We managed to create plasma in the engine and got high ionization using air.” After years of sky-high valuations and investor competition for shares of promising space startups, high interest rates and the threat of recession have made investors cautious. In response to a lack of new funding sources, space startups are cutting back on hiring, reducing travel and giving up leased office space. “Entrepreneurship is always a little bit of survival of the fittest,” said Jason Chen, founder and CEO of VentureScope, a McLean, Virginia, consulting and venture investment firm that works with entrepreneurs. “This economy definitely tightens the belt a little bit,...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics Quark-gluon plasma is conventionally described using relativistic hydrodynamic models and studied experimentally through heavy-ion collisions. There has been a long-standing discrepancy between theory and experiment regarding the observation of particle yields in the low transverse momentum region and their absence in the model predictions. Now, researchers from Japan have addressed this issue, proposing a model that pins down the origin of the missing particle yields. Credit: Tetsufumi Hirano from Sophia University, Japan New Model of Quark-Gluon Plasma Solves a Long-Standing Discrepancy Between Theory and Data Researchers from Japan provide a novel theoretical framework for describing the quark-gluon plasma, which agrees better with experimental data. The properties of quark-gluon plasma (QGP), the primordial form of matter in the early universe, is conventionally described using relativistic hydrodynamical models. However, these mode...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics China’s “artificial sun” broke all records as it generated extremely hot plasma for seven minutes on the night of April 12. The artificial sun project is based on nuclear fusion, giving China an unlimited energy source without generating residual waste. Nuclear fusion is based on the idea that energy can be released by forcing atomic nuclei together rather than separating them, as in the fission reactions that powers the existing nuclear power plants. In a breakthrough, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in the eastern Chinese city of Hefei produced and maintained plasma for 403 seconds, beating its own previous record of 101 seconds set in 2017, CGTN reported. The report noted that the quantum leap was achieved after more than 120,000 runs. The recent achievement represents another significant step towards developing highly effective, reasonably priced thermonuclear fusion reactors. Moreover, it is expected to ser...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics An international collaboration including scientists at the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) 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 long-standing 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. "For decades, scientists have lacked a first-principles understanding of nuclear beta decay, in which protons convert into neutrons, or vice versa, to form other elements," said ORNL staff scientist Gaute Hagen, who led the study. "Our team demonstrated that theoretical models and computation have progressed to the point where it is possible to calculate som...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics Physicists at the RHIC are studying phase changes in nuclear matter from gold ion collisions to identify a critical point in these transformations. Their research, involving recreating and examining the transition of quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter present after the Big Bang, suggests that fluctuations in the formation of lightweight nuclei could indicate this critical point. Certain data deviations hint at potential fluctuations, but further research is required to confirm a discovery. Analysis of lightweight nuclei emerging from gold ion collisions offers insight into primordial matter phase changes. Physicists analyzing data from gold ion smashups at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, are searching for evidence that nails down a so-called critical point in the way nuclear matter change...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics The moment astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped out on to the Moon's surface in 1969 is one of the most memorable moments in history. But what if the Moon Armstrong stepped onto was scarred by huge craters and poisoned from the effects of nuclear bombardment? At first reading, the title of the research paper – A Study of Lunar Research Flights, Vol 1 – sounds blandly bureaucratic and peaceful. The kind of paper easy to ignore. And that was probably the point. Glance at the cover, however, and things look a little different. Emblazoned in the centre is a shield depicting an atom, a nuclear bomb, and a mushroom cloud – the emblem of the Air Force Special Weapons Center at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, which played a key role in the development and testing of nuclear weapons. You might also like:How do you build a Moon base? The lost nuclear bombs that no-one can find Yuri Gagarin: the spaceman who came in from the cold Down at the bott...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics New Study Solves Mystery on Insulator-to-Metal Transition A study explored insulator-to-metal transitions, uncovering discrepancies in the traditional Landau-Zener formula and offering new insights into resistive switching. By using computer simulations, the research highlights the quantum mechanics involved and suggests that electronic and thermal switching can arise simultaneously, with potential applications in microelectronics and neuromorphic computing Looking only at their subatomic particles, most materials can be placed into one of two categories. Metals — like copper and iron — have free-flowing electrons that allow them to conduct electricity, while insulators — like glass and rubber — keep their electrons tightly bound and therefore do not conduct electricity. Insulators can turn into metals when hit with an intense electric field, offering tantalizing possibilities for microelectronics and supercomputing, but the physics beh...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics Quantum computers have the potential for computational breakthroughs in classically unsolvable nuclear physics problems. By exploring entanglement and symmetries in nuclei, LSU researchers seek to develop novel quantum algorithms that aim to ultimately model nuclei that are inaccessible to the best of modern-day supercomputers due the explosive growth in computational resources with the number of particles. Out of 13 awarded projects from the U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE, LSU’s “Quantum simulations of emergent collectivity and clustering in nuclei from first principles,” involves collaborative research from Associate Professor Kristina Launey, Assistant Professor Alexis Mercenne, Assistant Professor Omar Magaña-Loaiza, and Professor and Hearne Chair of Theoretical Physics James Sauls. The selected projects are at the forefront of interdisciplinary research in nuclear science, fundamental and applied research, as well as quantum inf...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics To solve the global energy crisis, researchers have long sought a source of clean, limitless energy. Nuclear fusion, the reaction that powers the stars of the universe, is one contender. By smashing and fusing hydrogen, a common element of seawater, the powerful process releases huge amounts of energy. Here on earth, one way scientists have recreated these extreme conditions is by using a tokamak, a doughnut-shaped vacuum surrounded by magnetic coils, that is used to contain a plasma of hydrogen that is hotter than the core of the Sun. However, the plasmas in these machines are inherently unstable, making sustaining the process required for nuclear fusion a complex challenge. For example, a control system needs to coordinate the tokamak's many magnetic coils and adjust the voltage on them thousands of times per second to ensure the plasma never touches the walls of the vessel, which would result in heat loss and possibly damage. To help...

Orchestrating an array of advanced microscopes, researchers at Princeton and the University of Texas have created images of molecules with such clarity that it is possible to distinguish iron from cobalt by the orbital shapes of electrons buzzing around them. Chemists have long used abstract shapes to describe electron orbitals in theory, which are crucial to how atoms and molecules behave. However, this groundbreaking study marks the first direct observation of these orbital shapes, rather than inferring them based on chemical reactions. “People have predicted certain orbital structures, but they have never seen them,” said Nan Yao, a lead researcher and the director of the Imaging and Analysis Center at the Princeton Materials Institute. Yao, a professor of the practice at Princeton, said the research team was surprised when they first looked at the images and were able to distinguish one element from another by the orbital shapes alone. No longer are electron orbitals the simple sp...

International Conference on Nuclear Physics The Rydberg state is prevalent across various physical mediums such as atoms, molecules, and solid materials. Rydberg excitons, which are highly energized, Coulomb-bound electron-hole pair states, were initially identified in the 1950s within the semiconductor material, Cu2O. In a study published in Science, Dr. Xu Yang and his colleagues from the Institute of Physics (IOP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with researchers led by Dr. Yuan Shengjun of Wuhan University, have reported observing Rydberg moiré excitons, which are moiré-trapped Rydberg excitons in the monolayer semiconductor WSe2 adjacent to small-angle twisted bilayer graphene (TBG). The solid-state nature of Rydberg excitons, combined with their large dipole moments, strong mutual interactions, and greatly enhanced interactions with the surroundings, holds promise for a wide range of applications in sensing, quantum optics, and quantum simulation. Howeve...