nuclear confereneces

Advanced technology corporation Thales has partnered with German fusion technology company Marvel Fusion and the ELI-NP (Extreme Light Infrastructure - Nuclear Physics) in Romania to upgrade the laser system and to perform research relevant to nuclear fusion as a future energy source. Over the course of 2023, the partners intend to enhance parameters of the laser system, such as the temporal laser pulse contrast, to enable unique research capabilities of laser-based fusion processes. As part of an ongoing cooperation with ELI-NP, Thales will supply a new stretcher unit that is used to stretch laser pulses over time, which initially reduces their peak power. The stretched, less powerful pulses can then be amplified and then compressed again. This process is part of the chirped pulse amplification, the development of which earned Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou the Nobel Prize in physics in 2018. Mourou is part of Marvel Fusion’s Science and Technology Board. Marvel Fusion, which wil...

An experimental technique that started life in nuclear and particle physics is now being used to measure chemical reactions inside the human body and to help diagnose cancer and heart disease in almost 50 clinical trials. Jack Miller charts the unexpected rise of dynamic nuclear polarization, which is vastly improving the quality of magnetic resonance imaging Life, for physicists, is an odd thing, seeming to create order in a universe that mostly tends towards disorder. At a biochemical level, life is even stranger – controlled and thermodynamically powered by a myriad of different molecules that most of us have probably never heard of. In fact, there’s one molecule – pyruvic acid – that’s crucial in keeping us alive. When burned, pyruvic acid releases carbon dioxide and water. If you’re exercising hard and your muscles are running low on oxygen, it’s converted anaerobically into lactic acid, which can give you a painful stitch. Later, your liver recycles the lactic acid back into suga...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics Research Excellence Measuring the size of atomic nuclei has sometimes been useful to probe aspects of nucleon-nucleon interaction and the bulk properties of nuclear matter. The charge radius of atomic nuclei, which can be extracted using laser spectroscopy techniques, is sensitive to both the bulk properties of nuclear matter and particularly subtle details of the interactions between protons and neutrons. Many recent studies have thus examined the properties of nuclei with unbalanced proton-to- neutron ratios, known as exotic nuclei. These exotic nuclei have been found to exhibit new phenomena and thus have proved valuable for testing nuclear theory and improving the current understanding of nuclear forces. Among other things, examining exotic nuclei can help to identify new magic numbers. In this context, the term 'magic numbers' refers to the number of protons or neutrons that correspond to completely filled...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics Research Excellence While most of us are still trying to grasp the concept of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, located at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) – the scientific community has already been planning its successor. A 2023 conference organised with support from the EU-funded FCCIS project is once again bringing together experts from around the world to share their latest research on tomorrow’s particle collider – the FCC. The 9th edition of the FCC Conference is taking place at the Millennium Conference Centre in London, United Kingdom, from 5 to 9 June 2023. As reported in a news item posted on the website of FCCIS project coordinator CERN, the event “will offer ample opportunities to share results, build new collaborations and solidify the vision of a post-LHC circular particle collider. It will provide an important occasion t...

  International Research Awards on Nuclear and Particle Physics ESA’s exoplanet mission Cheops has revealed a unique planetary system consisting of six exoplanets, five of which are locked in a rare rhythmic dance as they orbit their central star. The sizes and masses of the planets, however, don’t follow such an orderly pattern. This finding challenges current theories of planet formation. The discovery of increasing numbers of planetary systems, none like our own Solar System, continues to improve our understanding of how planets form and evolve. A striking example is the planetary system called TOI-178, some 200 light-years away in the constellation of Sculptor.   Astronomers already expected this star to host two or more exoplanets after observing it with NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). New, highly precise observations with Cheops, ESA’s Characterising Exoplanet Satellite that was launched in 2019, now show that TOI-178 harbors at least six planets and...

International Research Awards on Nuclear and  Particle Physics First-of-its-kind experimental evidence defies conventional theories about how plasmas emit or absorb radiation. Most people are familiar with solids, liquids, and gases as three states of matter. However, a fourth state of matter, called plasmas, is the most abundant form of matter in the universe, found throughout our solar system in the sun and other planetary bodies. Because dense plasma—a hot soup of atoms with free-moving electrons and ions—typically only forms under extreme pressure and temperatures, scientists are still working to comprehend the fundamentals of this state of matter. Understanding how atoms react under extreme pressure conditions—a field known as high-energy-density physics (HEDP)—gives scientists valuable insights into the fields of planetary science, astrophysics, and fusion energy. One important question in the field of HEDP is how plasmas emit or absorb radiation. Current models depicting rad...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics Research Excellence You’d think that for something as huge and overt as the Sun, hiding things about itself might not be possible, especially when there’s multiple probes and telescopes measuring its every activity. And yet, researchers recently found something very surprising about the star. For years now, the Sun has reportedly been emitting highly bright light in the form of an extraordinary amount of gamma rays — which carry the most energy out of any other wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum. The emissions equate to approximately 1 trillion electron volts, making it the highest-energy radiation to ever be documented from our solar system’s star! While these gamma rays cannot harm us and do not quite reach Earth, their telltale signatures are discernable, provided one is using the right tools, such as the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory, or HAWC. Considering how it operates 24/7, the HAWC has an...

International Conference on Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics Research Excellence The government on Wednesday approved the National Quantum Mission to nurture and scale up scientific and industrial research and development in quantum technology. The mission involves a cost to ₹6,003.65 crore from 2023-24 to 2030-31. ALSO READ | Explained: What is Quantum technology? How it promises to reinforce cyber security? The National Quantum Mission (NQM), approved at a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will accelerate quantum technology-led economic growth and nurture the ecosystem in the country. "NQM is going to give India a quantum jump in this arena," Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh told reporters here. India will be the seventh country to have a dedicated quantum mission after the US, Austria, Finland, France, Canada and China. ALSO READ: Prepare now for the era of quantum computing "The new mission targets developing inte...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics Research Excellence A team of scientists from Argentina and Spain have reported the first observational evidence that a type of young low-mass star, known as T Tauri stars, are capable of emitting gamma radiation. The study is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Very energetic radiation from the sky cannot be easily observed from Earth. The high sensitivity of the Fermi satellite helps to solve this issue by observing the universe in gamma-rays, the most energetic region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The Fermi satellite has been continuously observing the sky since its launch in 2008, and from these observations it is known that about 30% of gamma-ray sources detected throughout the entire night sky remain unidentified – the origins of these gamma-ray detections are unknown. Some of these mysterious sources were studied by PhD student Agostina Filócomo and a team of researchers in orde...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics Research Excellence   A Chinese research team has developed a new concept for extracting thermal energy from low-temperature waste heat sources and reusing it on demand simply by controlling the pressure. Heat production accounts for more than 50% of the world’s final energy consumption and analysis of waste heat potential shows that 72% of the world’s primary energy consumption is lost after conversion, mainly in the form of heat. It is also responsible for more than 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Against this background, researchers led by Prof. LI Bing from the Institute of Metal Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have proposed and realized a new concept—barocaloric thermal batteries based on the unique inverse barocaloric effect. An inverse barocaloric effect is characterized by a pressure-induced endothermic response, in sharp contrast to a normal barocaloric effect where pressurization l...

A growing number of founders are leveraging the power of technology to help solve some of society’s biggest problems, from developing self-monitoring digital health platforms that give patients more autonomy to finding new solutions for storing renewable energy. Today, on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, it’s particularly important to recognise the advancements a growing number of founders have made in making technology open, equal, and accessible to all, from creating devices that take into account deaf and blind communities to using AI to build groundbreaking advancements in prosthetics. But, due to the novel and often disruptive approaches they take to solve common problems, these startups also need to contend with additional hurdles. They often struggle with developing their product and business models, complying with regulations and bureaucratic red tape, gaining funding, and marketing their products and services. Zeng Xi Feng, founder and CEO of TangTangQuan, a new platform t...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics Research Excellence A research group led by Prof. Wu Kaifeng from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), Chinese Academy of Sciences recently reported the successful initialization, coherent quantum-state control, and readout of spins at room temperature using solution-grown quantum dots, which represents an important advance in quantum information science. The study was published in Nature Nanotechnology on Dec 19th. Quantum information science is concerned with the manipulation of the quantum version of information bits (called qubits). When people talk about materials for quantum information processing, they usually think of those manufactured using the most cutting-edge technologies and operating at very cold temperatures (below a few Kelvin), not the "warm and messy" materials synthesized in solution by chemists. Recent years have witnessed the discovery of isolated defects in solid-state materi...

  International Conference on Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics Research Excellence Intel has released updated MLPerf benchmarks of its Gaudi2 accelerators, which have been the talk of the town recently. The data obtained proves that the Gaudi AI accelerators are framing out to be a viable alternative to NVIDIA's H100 GPUs, allowing Intel to get its share of the "AI hype". Before diving into the benchmarks, it is important to realize that the AI industry is predicted to grow exponentially in the coming years. Gartner, an American insight firm, has disclosed that the AI industry is set to reach a $53.4 billion valuation in 2023, which is an increment of 20.9% from the previous year. Moreover, the firm predicts that the industry could almost reach the $120 billion mark by 2027, which is a prime reason why companies like Intel and AMD are striving to make a dominant entry with their own AI solutions. Based on the data released by Intel, Gaudi2 accelerators have seen a dec...