A Q&A with physicist William Trischuk about the Large Hadron Collider.
Did you know that only four per cent of the universe is visibly accounted for? The vast majority is what’s called dark matter and dark energy—we can observe its effects, but we don’t know what it is.
Did you know that every particle of matter has a corresponding anti-matter particle out there somewhere and that these two particles should annihilate each other? So why are we still here?
These are some of the head-scratchers that particle physicists are hoping the experimental Large Hadron Collider will answer. We spoke to U of T physics professor William Trischuk, one of the scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider to find out how the ambitious project is going.
What is the Large Hadron Collider?
It’s the highest energy particle accelerator anywhere in the world. It’s a 27-kilometre circular tunnel built 100 metres below France and Switzerland, operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). It allows us to accelerate subatomic particles to previously unimagined energies. There are other places in the universe—the Big Bang—where these kinds of energies have existed, but this is our only controlled way of studying what goes on at these energies.
Why do we want to do this?
If we produce higher energies and collision rates, these can be converted for brief instants in time to mass, to new particles. We know protons are all around us. We are putting energy into them, accelerating them to energies that are 7,000 times what the protons have when they are not moving, and then colliding them. In principle, we can produce energies 14,000 times as high as the protons have on their own.
These are the types of energies that existed after the Big Bang. Particle physics has been chasing the Big Bang backwards to higher and higher energies. We now understand how things work at a millionth of a second after the Big Bang. We’re trying to go to a billionth of a second. Producing higher and higher energy collisions takes us back farther and farther toward the beginning of the Big Bang, when all the particles in the universe were made, but before they had coalesced to form protons and neutrons.
And why do we want to reproduce the Big Bang?
We have a Standard Model of physics that has allowed us to explain the world. Everything seems to fit together but we don’t understand why. The Standard Model is very rational. We can write down how it works. But we don’t understand why it works.
Colleagues in theoretical physics have got lots of great ideas and have written hundreds of papers, but physics is an observational science. We want to peel back the next layer of the Standard Model and put some order to it. The chemist Mendeleev catalogued the periodic table of the elements, but he didn’t know about nuclei and atoms and electrons. When science developed more sophisticated measurements it became clear why the periodic table has the structure it has. That’s what we’re trying to do now in particle physics.
As scientists, first we tried to understand how the atoms and molecules work in chemistry. Chemistry describes the periodic table and allows us to understand why some things are very reactive and some things are not. Then we tried to understand how the protons and neutrons work in nuclear physics. Neutrons and protons tell us how nuclei formed and why some can give us nuclear energy and others are stable and can’t. Now we’re trying to understand how different combinations of quarks make different particles.
Are there practical applications?
I bring up chemistry and nuclear physics because we’ve made something of them. When Mendeleev discovered the periodic table, nobody knew what chemistry would allow us to do in everyday life. When Rutherford discovered the nucleus, he was just trying to understand how things were put together, but for better worse, we found things to do with nuclei. We can get energy from them because we mastered the physics that explains to us how nuclear physics work.
This is the same kind of thing that one could imagine doing with the particles—this is the next phase. But all of these applications took 30 to 50 years. It’s still 10 years in our future before we begin to learn all the Large Hadron Collider can teach us about particle physics, and then we can begin to explore applications.
This is the way science and engineering have worked together for hundreds of years, going back to Newton with an apple falling on his head. Once we understand the principles, we find applications. I’m firmly convinced that we will find something, whether it will be science-fiction like warp drives, anti-matter, I don’t know. But understanding how it all fits together is the first step.
What is your interest in the Large Hardon Collider?
My interest is more in seeing what happens. Others are more focused on analyzing the data the LHC will yield. My specialty is in building pieces of the particle detector. It takes hundreds, maybe even a thousand people to build and maintain the facility. It’s an experiment that I do with 3,000 of my closest friends!
Does the detector work like a camera? You accelerate and then collide particles, but do you then take pictures of them?
There are many layers but the innermost layer is very similar to the way a camera collects light, classifies it in terms of colours and digitizes it. Our detectors are very much like digital cameras—except your digital camera is hard pressed to take a picture a second. We take 40 million pictures a second.
So there are also practical technologies being spun-out of the Large Hadron Collider, aside from any future applications of what we learn about the particles?
Yes. There are many things that we do with the technology that people do turn into something. We push big computers to work together all around the world. We’re pleased to take credit for having invented the worldwide web. It was physicists at CERN in the early 1990s who needed to share data and control their experiments, because they couldn’t be there all the time, who developed the protocols for sending information back and forth. The web protocols were invented at CERN.
Another example: a couple years ago we had an accident. There was a power outage and a short circuit and it ended up being almost a year-long repair effort. We were pushing the French electricity grid. These lessons will find their way back into the general power distribution system. We’re doing electrical transfers that are 100 times more concentrated than anything you would see in normal civilian electric grid. We make mistakes, try to learn from them and disseminate what we learn back to the electricity providers.
There was a leak to the media a few months ago suggesting that the Higgs particle, often called the “God Particle,” had been detected. What is the Higgs and did you find it?
The Higgs particle is theorized to interact with everything. It’s a mechanism that Peter Higgs, a theorist who worked in the 1960s, described. He did a thought experiment and looked at what kind of thing could explain the array of particles we have in front of us now. It’s a beautiful and very economic theory, but we have no direct evidence for its existence. Unfortunately with the data we have now, we aren’t able to see Peter Higgs’s theorized particle. In fact, with more data, it turns out we had only seen a hint. The additional data is telling us it was just a statistical fluctuation.
When do you think the group will have any findings of note to report?
When we’re able to say we’ve “discovered” something it will have been based on data we’ve taken for six months to a year. There’s also another experiment, called CMS, doing the same thing we’re doing. We don’t want to get scooped by them and they don’t want to get scooped by us. There is pressure to do things as efficiently as we can, and yet not to get it wrong. We want to discover what’s there. We don’t want to discover what’s not there! There are lots of examples of people discovering what’s not there and then six months or six years later somebody comes up with unequivocal evidence showing that it was a mistake.
Provided by University of Toronto
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Looking back into the Big Bang
PhysOrg: Looking back into the Big Bang
One step closer to a nuclear timekeeper
New Scientist: One step closer to a nuclear timekeeper
WHY would anyone want to build a super-precise clock in the hope that its tick drifts as time goes by? That's what is driving a team that is trying to build the first nuclear clock, with a tick based on the antics of an atomic nucleus. They reason that the behaviour of the clock could show whether certain forces of nature fluctuate in a way that is predicted by some exotic theories of physics.
The most accurate clocks we have are the so-called atomic clocks. They exploit the fact that an atom of caesium, or some other element, emits visible light or microwaves when one of its electrons drops from a high energy state to a lower one. The frequency of these emissions are so precisely predictable that it can act like the tick of a highly accurate clock. Atomic clocks provide the super-accurate timing needed for GPS satellites and to define the length of a second.
A nuclear clock would be different. Instead of relying on light waves emitted by electrons, it would use radiation emitted when the nucleus is excited to a high energy state, and then drops into a lower energy state. "All the electrons are going to sit in exactly the same place as they normally sit," says Alex Kuzmich of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. "It's the nucleus that's going to make a transition."
The trouble is that most such transitions within the nucleus emit high-energy X-rays or gamma rays, and these are tough to work with. An exception is thorium-229, an isotope produced in nuclear reactors that has three fewer neutrons than the only naturally occurring isotope, thorium-232. Its nucleus is predicted to emit and absorb ultraviolet light.
As a first step towards building a nuclear clock, Kuzmich and his colleagues have recorded the light given off by excited electrons in thorium-229 ions. The team fired a laser at a solid thorium-229 target in a vacuum chamber. This stripped electrons from some of the material, and vaporised it. A second set of lasers then slowed and cooled this ion vapour, while magnetic fields kept the ions from hitting the chamber walls. A third laser then excited the electrons in these trapped ions. The team was able to record the light given off as the electrons in individual ions dropped to a lower energy state (Physical Review Letters, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.223001).
To turn this set-up into a nuclear clock, the team now needs to hit upon the precise frequency of light needed to excite the thorium-229 nuclei - and observe the light emitted when it drops back in energy. "If one of the ions makes this nuclear transition, we should be able to observe it right away," says Kuzmich. This will require painstakingly firing lasers of different frequencies at the trapped ions, watching for when they emit light.
The team's results are "really exciting" and "a huge step" towards making a nuclear clock, says Eric Hudson of the University of California, Los Angeles, who is not a member of the team and is working on an alternative approach. He and his colleagues plan to hit a thorium-229 target using light from a particle accelerator, which can be more easily tuned across a wide range of wavelengths than a laser.
A nuclear clock could be used to test whether the strength of the fundamental forces of nature changes over time. Some theories, including string theory, predict that they should drift, and there are some tentative hints of such changes from astronomical measurements.
The frequencies of radiation emitted by an atomic clock are closely tied to a parameter called alpha, which governs the strength of the electromagnetic force. By contrast, the frequency of a nuclear clock depends on the strength of the strong nuclear force. So if the relative strength of these forces changes, it would show up as a divergence in the time kept by a nuclear clock compared with an atomic clock, a technique that could be the most sensitive yet for seeing this effect.
Lasers Could Help Build a Nuclear Clock
If nuclear clocks are possible, what about nuclear lasers? Thorium could be the key to building those too.
Lasers have been made from a wide variety of materials. To date, they all work by exciting electrons that are either floating freely or in atoms, prompting the emission of a burst of light. In atoms of the isotope thorium-229, the energy levels in the nucleus are arranged in such a way that the nucleus could also be made to emit ultraviolet light (see main story).
Eugene Tkalya of the Institute of Nuclear Physics at Moscow State University in Russia suggests making a thorium laser by firing conventional ultraviolet lasers at crystals made mostly of lithium, calcium, aluminium and fluorine, with a sprinkling of thorium. Recent experiments suggest the electrons in this material will not interfere with the propagation of light emitted by thorium nuclei (Physical Review Letters, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.162501). In other materials, this effect would make a nuclear laser fizzle.
Though conventional lasers that emit UV light already exist, Tkalya says that thorium lasers could form the light source in a nuclear thorium clock, and help us uncover the properties and behaviour of the thorium-229 nucleus's excited state.
WHY would anyone want to build a super-precise clock in the hope that its tick drifts as time goes by? That's what is driving a team that is trying to build the first nuclear clock, with a tick based on the antics of an atomic nucleus. They reason that the behaviour of the clock could show whether certain forces of nature fluctuate in a way that is predicted by some exotic theories of physics.
The most accurate clocks we have are the so-called atomic clocks. They exploit the fact that an atom of caesium, or some other element, emits visible light or microwaves when one of its electrons drops from a high energy state to a lower one. The frequency of these emissions are so precisely predictable that it can act like the tick of a highly accurate clock. Atomic clocks provide the super-accurate timing needed for GPS satellites and to define the length of a second.
A nuclear clock would be different. Instead of relying on light waves emitted by electrons, it would use radiation emitted when the nucleus is excited to a high energy state, and then drops into a lower energy state. "All the electrons are going to sit in exactly the same place as they normally sit," says Alex Kuzmich of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. "It's the nucleus that's going to make a transition."
The trouble is that most such transitions within the nucleus emit high-energy X-rays or gamma rays, and these are tough to work with. An exception is thorium-229, an isotope produced in nuclear reactors that has three fewer neutrons than the only naturally occurring isotope, thorium-232. Its nucleus is predicted to emit and absorb ultraviolet light.
As a first step towards building a nuclear clock, Kuzmich and his colleagues have recorded the light given off by excited electrons in thorium-229 ions. The team fired a laser at a solid thorium-229 target in a vacuum chamber. This stripped electrons from some of the material, and vaporised it. A second set of lasers then slowed and cooled this ion vapour, while magnetic fields kept the ions from hitting the chamber walls. A third laser then excited the electrons in these trapped ions. The team was able to record the light given off as the electrons in individual ions dropped to a lower energy state (Physical Review Letters, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.223001).
To turn this set-up into a nuclear clock, the team now needs to hit upon the precise frequency of light needed to excite the thorium-229 nuclei - and observe the light emitted when it drops back in energy. "If one of the ions makes this nuclear transition, we should be able to observe it right away," says Kuzmich. This will require painstakingly firing lasers of different frequencies at the trapped ions, watching for when they emit light.
The team's results are "really exciting" and "a huge step" towards making a nuclear clock, says Eric Hudson of the University of California, Los Angeles, who is not a member of the team and is working on an alternative approach. He and his colleagues plan to hit a thorium-229 target using light from a particle accelerator, which can be more easily tuned across a wide range of wavelengths than a laser.
A nuclear clock could be used to test whether the strength of the fundamental forces of nature changes over time. Some theories, including string theory, predict that they should drift, and there are some tentative hints of such changes from astronomical measurements.
The frequencies of radiation emitted by an atomic clock are closely tied to a parameter called alpha, which governs the strength of the electromagnetic force. By contrast, the frequency of a nuclear clock depends on the strength of the strong nuclear force. So if the relative strength of these forces changes, it would show up as a divergence in the time kept by a nuclear clock compared with an atomic clock, a technique that could be the most sensitive yet for seeing this effect.
Lasers Could Help Build a Nuclear Clock
If nuclear clocks are possible, what about nuclear lasers? Thorium could be the key to building those too.
Lasers have been made from a wide variety of materials. To date, they all work by exciting electrons that are either floating freely or in atoms, prompting the emission of a burst of light. In atoms of the isotope thorium-229, the energy levels in the nucleus are arranged in such a way that the nucleus could also be made to emit ultraviolet light (see main story).
Eugene Tkalya of the Institute of Nuclear Physics at Moscow State University in Russia suggests making a thorium laser by firing conventional ultraviolet lasers at crystals made mostly of lithium, calcium, aluminium and fluorine, with a sprinkling of thorium. Recent experiments suggest the electrons in this material will not interfere with the propagation of light emitted by thorium nuclei (Physical Review Letters, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.162501). In other materials, this effect would make a nuclear laser fizzle.
Though conventional lasers that emit UV light already exist, Tkalya says that thorium lasers could form the light source in a nuclear thorium clock, and help us uncover the properties and behaviour of the thorium-229 nucleus's excited state.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Physics 101 continued - Motion
Of what does the study of physics consist?
Motion, heat, light, sound, electricity and magneism. All these are forms of energy.
Physics is "a consideration of the interrelationships of energy and matter."
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, physical techniques made it possible to determine the physical structure of stars, and the science of astrophysics was born. The study of the vibrations set up in the body of the earth by earthquakes gave rise to the study of geophysics.
The study of chemical reactions through physical techniques initiated and constantly broadened the field of "physical chemistry," and the latter in tyrn penetrated the study of biology to produce "molecular biology."
And of course, the discoveries of Madame Curie and her associates led to nuclear physics.
Assumptions
The notion that every form of substance has its natural place in the universe (a theory of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) which stated that there were four elements: earth - at the center of the universe, water surrounding it, air over it, and fire over air. (We'll get to the fifth element later.)
An assumption [in scientific terms] is something accepted without proof, and it is incorrect to speak of an assumption as true or false, since there is no way of proving it to be either. (If there were, it would no longer be an assumption.)
It is better to consider assumptions as either useful or useless, depending on whether or not deductions made from them correspond to reality.
If two different assumptions, or sets of assumptions, both lead to deductions that correspond to reality, then the one that explains more is the more useful.
________________
Bibliography
Understanding Physics, by Isaac Asimov
Motion, heat, light, sound, electricity and magneism. All these are forms of energy.
Physics is "a consideration of the interrelationships of energy and matter."
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, physical techniques made it possible to determine the physical structure of stars, and the science of astrophysics was born. The study of the vibrations set up in the body of the earth by earthquakes gave rise to the study of geophysics.
The study of chemical reactions through physical techniques initiated and constantly broadened the field of "physical chemistry," and the latter in tyrn penetrated the study of biology to produce "molecular biology."
And of course, the discoveries of Madame Curie and her associates led to nuclear physics.
Assumptions
The notion that every form of substance has its natural place in the universe (a theory of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) which stated that there were four elements: earth - at the center of the universe, water surrounding it, air over it, and fire over air. (We'll get to the fifth element later.)
An assumption [in scientific terms] is something accepted without proof, and it is incorrect to speak of an assumption as true or false, since there is no way of proving it to be either. (If there were, it would no longer be an assumption.)
It is better to consider assumptions as either useful or useless, depending on whether or not deductions made from them correspond to reality.
If two different assumptions, or sets of assumptions, both lead to deductions that correspond to reality, then the one that explains more is the more useful.
________________
Bibliography
Understanding Physics, by Isaac Asimov
Monday, June 27, 2011
Pak not capable of keeping n-arms safe: top nuclear physicist
Indian Express: Pak not capable of keeping n-arms safe: top nuclear physicist
Pakistan’s establishment lacks the ability to keep its nuclear weapons safe, says one of the country’s top nuclear experts, pointing out that the weapons are guarded by personnel of the Pakistan Army which has been infiltrated for decades by radical elements.
Pervez A Hoodbhoy, who teaches nuclear physics at Islamabad’s government-run Quaid-e-Azam University, spoke to The Indian Express in Islamabad. His comments came amid growing concerns on the safety of nuclear weapons in Pakistan.
“It doesn’t matter whether Pakistan’s chief of army staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani swears on the Quran that he will make sure that nuclear weapons will be safe. The question is, does he have the power to do that?” said Hoodbhoy, 60, who has a PhD from MIT.
“It seems to me that the Pakistan Army is playing with fire. It knows that these nuclear weapons are ultimately in the hands of their own people and their own people have been affected by decades of radicalisation. They may claim that they have personnel reliability tests, but I don’t believe that answering questions on a form may indicate his intentions,” he said.
He dismissed Pakistan Interior (Home) Minister Rehman Malik’s recent assertion that the country’s nukes are 200 per cent safe. “Now Rehman Malik must be a genius to have come up with the figure of 200 per cent. How he arrives at that we have no idea, but that is what the Pakistan military wants us to believe and to unquestionably accept that the nuclear weapons have been provided security in Pakistan…which, personally I don’t believe,” he said.
“So to come up with wild figures, I don’t believe there is source of any reassurance to the people of Pakistan or to the thinking people. We have seen the infiltration of radicals into the ranks of the Army. Very recently, a brigadier and four majors have been arrested. And our brigadiers are in charge of missile regiments too. So where things could go, I don’t know.”
He said that the Pakistan establishment is in a “state of denial” in spite of the fact that there have been repeated attacks on the headquarters of the Army and the ISI.
The repeated assertion in Pakistan, he said, is that nuclear weapons have so many layers of security that it would be impossible to penetrate them. “But this is something that the world obviously questions,” he said, adding that the reason is no matter how many technical precautions you take, “ultimately, it is the people who handle the nuclear weapons, just as the people are responsible for the defence of the Army, Air Force and Navy bases”.
He referred to the recent attack on the Pakistan Navy airbase in Mehran, where a handful of people were “so well-informed by the insiders” that they managed to keep defenders at bay for over 18 hours, and destroyed two of Pakistan’s most valuable aircraft.
“So the worry that something similar may happen with the nuclear weapons crosses everybody’s mind… therefore, even if the strategic plans division says everything is fine, that does not reassure everybody.”
He said India and Pakistan “are locked in an arms race”, adding, “Pakistan is building as many nuclear weapons as it can. They have very little utility... they provide a cover under which (there is) yet another spurt of nuclear weapons production.”
Pakistan’s establishment lacks the ability to keep its nuclear weapons safe, says one of the country’s top nuclear experts, pointing out that the weapons are guarded by personnel of the Pakistan Army which has been infiltrated for decades by radical elements.
Pervez A Hoodbhoy, who teaches nuclear physics at Islamabad’s government-run Quaid-e-Azam University, spoke to The Indian Express in Islamabad. His comments came amid growing concerns on the safety of nuclear weapons in Pakistan.
“It doesn’t matter whether Pakistan’s chief of army staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani swears on the Quran that he will make sure that nuclear weapons will be safe. The question is, does he have the power to do that?” said Hoodbhoy, 60, who has a PhD from MIT.
“It seems to me that the Pakistan Army is playing with fire. It knows that these nuclear weapons are ultimately in the hands of their own people and their own people have been affected by decades of radicalisation. They may claim that they have personnel reliability tests, but I don’t believe that answering questions on a form may indicate his intentions,” he said.
He dismissed Pakistan Interior (Home) Minister Rehman Malik’s recent assertion that the country’s nukes are 200 per cent safe. “Now Rehman Malik must be a genius to have come up with the figure of 200 per cent. How he arrives at that we have no idea, but that is what the Pakistan military wants us to believe and to unquestionably accept that the nuclear weapons have been provided security in Pakistan…which, personally I don’t believe,” he said.
“So to come up with wild figures, I don’t believe there is source of any reassurance to the people of Pakistan or to the thinking people. We have seen the infiltration of radicals into the ranks of the Army. Very recently, a brigadier and four majors have been arrested. And our brigadiers are in charge of missile regiments too. So where things could go, I don’t know.”
He said that the Pakistan establishment is in a “state of denial” in spite of the fact that there have been repeated attacks on the headquarters of the Army and the ISI.
The repeated assertion in Pakistan, he said, is that nuclear weapons have so many layers of security that it would be impossible to penetrate them. “But this is something that the world obviously questions,” he said, adding that the reason is no matter how many technical precautions you take, “ultimately, it is the people who handle the nuclear weapons, just as the people are responsible for the defence of the Army, Air Force and Navy bases”.
He referred to the recent attack on the Pakistan Navy airbase in Mehran, where a handful of people were “so well-informed by the insiders” that they managed to keep defenders at bay for over 18 hours, and destroyed two of Pakistan’s most valuable aircraft.
“So the worry that something similar may happen with the nuclear weapons crosses everybody’s mind… therefore, even if the strategic plans division says everything is fine, that does not reassure everybody.”
He said India and Pakistan “are locked in an arms race”, adding, “Pakistan is building as many nuclear weapons as it can. They have very little utility... they provide a cover under which (there is) yet another spurt of nuclear weapons production.”
Friday, June 24, 2011
Beam line 13 fuels discovery fever for fundamental physicists
PhysOrg.com: Beam line 13 fuels discovery fever for fundamental physicists
"In many ways, the most reasonable universe would be one in which there is no matter," says the University of Tennessee's Geoff Greene. "But that is manifestly not the universe we see. So something is wrong with the simple picture, and it is not understood why the universe actually has matter, instead of no matter, which makes more sense." This question, and others like it, are at the heart of the science that will be addressed at the Fundamental Physics Beam Line now being commissioned at SNS.
Beam line 13 is a cooperative venture between Basic Energy Sciences at DOE, which granted a beam line to nuclear physics, and the Nuclear Physics Program Office, which supported the construction of the FNPB and supports operation of the experiments.
Beam line 13 has an atypical user program. As with other beam lines, selection of approved experiments is made by a proposal-driven process, with the key criterion being scientific merit as determined by peer review. But at FNPB, a single experiment doesn't necessarily run for a few days, as most do at SNS and HFIR. Instead, it may run continuously for several years.
There may be as many as 100 collaborators. "They may come for an extended stay. They may send students. But each experiment may take a year or years to construct, a year or years to collect the data, and then it's taken down and something else of similar scope will be put in place," Greene explains.
There are two classes of experiment that the scientists will undertake. One is to determine the fundamental properties of the neutron itself. The other will investigate the interaction of the neutron in very simple nuclear systems.
The first experiment at beam line 13, which is now in place, is of the second type: A very simple nuclear reaction is studied to investigate what happens when a proton captures a polarized neutron—a neutron with an oriented spin. In this interaction a gamma ray is emitted. Is it emitted randomly, in any direction, or is there a slight preference for the direction of the emitted gamma ray to lie along the spin axis of the neutron?
"Why do we care about this? Because only one of the four forces of nature—weak, strong, electromagnetic, and gravitation—is known to violate parity, to be 'handed'," Greene says. That is the weak force, which is "left-handed," and which is normally studied in particle decays. But very little is actually known about the operation of the weak force between pairs of nucleons (neutrons and protons, the particles within the nucleus of an atom). David Bowman and Seppo Penttila of the ORNL Physics Division are the principal investigators on this first experiment, which is a collaboration between ORNL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Universities of Tennessee, Virginia, Manitoba (Canada), Arizona State, Kentucky, Michigan and others.
The target for the SNS neutron beam in this experiment is a sample of liquid hydrogen; this is effectively a target of protons, since each hydrogen atom has a single proton as its nucleus. The SNS pulsed neutron beam is fired at the target, which is surrounded by gamma ray detectors. The neutrons are polarized and are either "spin-up" or "spin-down." SNS provides 60 neutron pulses per second, and the researchers select the incoming beam's spin orientation to give an alternating orientation at the target. They then check whether the detectors see a corresponding alternating pattern of emitted gamma rays (less, more, less, etc.), correlated with the direction of the incident neutrons' spins.
Unless they observe a large sample of such incident beam spin reversals (more than 100 million), they won't see a discernible 'handedness' in the direction the gamma rays emitted from the nucleus because the "weak" force is so very weak relative to the dominant nuclear force (the "strong interaction"). Greene compares this to the flipping of a coin. To see if it is a 'fair coin,' it must be flipped a great many times to determine if there is a statistically significant bias between heads and tails. Once the direction of gamma ray emission is measured with sufficient accuracy, "we expect to see something. It is predicted at somewhere between 1 part in 108 and 1 part in 107. That means we capture on the order of 1016 neutrons. That, of course, is why we are at SNS-the most intense pulsed neutron source in the world."
The early results of this experiment, conducted at Los Alamos, were recently published in Physical Review C.
A second experiment is in preparation to look at one of the fundamental properties of the neutron-its electric dipole moment.
Here, physicists want to determine whether the neutron is uniformly electrically neutral or its positive and negative charges are actually displaced slightly with respect to one another. "If it has such an electric dipole moment, that has a very profound implication. Because to have an electric dipole moment would require a violation of time reversal symmetry."
In physics, symmetry under time reversal (T) tests whether physical laws can distinguish between forward and backwards directions of the passage of time (the direction is sometimes referred to as the "arrow" of time). To a good approximation the laws of physics are symmetric (invariant, unchanged) under T.
If the neutron electric dipole is not zero, "that could shed light on a really fundamental interesting question, which is, why does the universe have matter at all," Greene says, "for most theories that seek to explain the matter-anti-matter asymmetry require a violation of time reversal symmetry."
Construction of FNPB began in 2002. The instrument team first opened the shutter for testing in 2008. The current neutron/proton capture experiment took its first beam in December 2010.
Provided by Oak Ridge National Laboratory
"In many ways, the most reasonable universe would be one in which there is no matter," says the University of Tennessee's Geoff Greene. "But that is manifestly not the universe we see. So something is wrong with the simple picture, and it is not understood why the universe actually has matter, instead of no matter, which makes more sense." This question, and others like it, are at the heart of the science that will be addressed at the Fundamental Physics Beam Line now being commissioned at SNS.
Beam line 13 is a cooperative venture between Basic Energy Sciences at DOE, which granted a beam line to nuclear physics, and the Nuclear Physics Program Office, which supported the construction of the FNPB and supports operation of the experiments.
Beam line 13 has an atypical user program. As with other beam lines, selection of approved experiments is made by a proposal-driven process, with the key criterion being scientific merit as determined by peer review. But at FNPB, a single experiment doesn't necessarily run for a few days, as most do at SNS and HFIR. Instead, it may run continuously for several years.
There may be as many as 100 collaborators. "They may come for an extended stay. They may send students. But each experiment may take a year or years to construct, a year or years to collect the data, and then it's taken down and something else of similar scope will be put in place," Greene explains.
There are two classes of experiment that the scientists will undertake. One is to determine the fundamental properties of the neutron itself. The other will investigate the interaction of the neutron in very simple nuclear systems.
The first experiment at beam line 13, which is now in place, is of the second type: A very simple nuclear reaction is studied to investigate what happens when a proton captures a polarized neutron—a neutron with an oriented spin. In this interaction a gamma ray is emitted. Is it emitted randomly, in any direction, or is there a slight preference for the direction of the emitted gamma ray to lie along the spin axis of the neutron?
"Why do we care about this? Because only one of the four forces of nature—weak, strong, electromagnetic, and gravitation—is known to violate parity, to be 'handed'," Greene says. That is the weak force, which is "left-handed," and which is normally studied in particle decays. But very little is actually known about the operation of the weak force between pairs of nucleons (neutrons and protons, the particles within the nucleus of an atom). David Bowman and Seppo Penttila of the ORNL Physics Division are the principal investigators on this first experiment, which is a collaboration between ORNL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Universities of Tennessee, Virginia, Manitoba (Canada), Arizona State, Kentucky, Michigan and others.
The target for the SNS neutron beam in this experiment is a sample of liquid hydrogen; this is effectively a target of protons, since each hydrogen atom has a single proton as its nucleus. The SNS pulsed neutron beam is fired at the target, which is surrounded by gamma ray detectors. The neutrons are polarized and are either "spin-up" or "spin-down." SNS provides 60 neutron pulses per second, and the researchers select the incoming beam's spin orientation to give an alternating orientation at the target. They then check whether the detectors see a corresponding alternating pattern of emitted gamma rays (less, more, less, etc.), correlated with the direction of the incident neutrons' spins.
Unless they observe a large sample of such incident beam spin reversals (more than 100 million), they won't see a discernible 'handedness' in the direction the gamma rays emitted from the nucleus because the "weak" force is so very weak relative to the dominant nuclear force (the "strong interaction"). Greene compares this to the flipping of a coin. To see if it is a 'fair coin,' it must be flipped a great many times to determine if there is a statistically significant bias between heads and tails. Once the direction of gamma ray emission is measured with sufficient accuracy, "we expect to see something. It is predicted at somewhere between 1 part in 108 and 1 part in 107. That means we capture on the order of 1016 neutrons. That, of course, is why we are at SNS-the most intense pulsed neutron source in the world."
The early results of this experiment, conducted at Los Alamos, were recently published in Physical Review C.
A second experiment is in preparation to look at one of the fundamental properties of the neutron-its electric dipole moment.
Here, physicists want to determine whether the neutron is uniformly electrically neutral or its positive and negative charges are actually displaced slightly with respect to one another. "If it has such an electric dipole moment, that has a very profound implication. Because to have an electric dipole moment would require a violation of time reversal symmetry."
In physics, symmetry under time reversal (T) tests whether physical laws can distinguish between forward and backwards directions of the passage of time (the direction is sometimes referred to as the "arrow" of time). To a good approximation the laws of physics are symmetric (invariant, unchanged) under T.
If the neutron electric dipole is not zero, "that could shed light on a really fundamental interesting question, which is, why does the universe have matter at all," Greene says, "for most theories that seek to explain the matter-anti-matter asymmetry require a violation of time reversal symmetry."
Construction of FNPB began in 2002. The instrument team first opened the shutter for testing in 2008. The current neutron/proton capture experiment took its first beam in December 2010.
Provided by Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Famous Chinese Physicist He Zehui Dies at 97
CRIEnglish: Famous Chinese Physicist He Zehui Dies at 97
Famous Chinese nuclear physicist He Zehui, a senior academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, died Monday in Beijing at the age of 97, Chinanews.com reports.
Don't be confused by her first name! He Zehui was a woman.
Born in Suzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province, in 1914, He graduated from the Department of Physics at Tsinghua University in Beijing in 1936. She then studied ballistics at the Berlin University of Technology.
He earned a doctorate in engineering in 1940 after writing a dissertation on a new method for testing the speed of flying bullets.
She remained in Germany for several years, conducting nuclear physics research. She initially observed the commute stamina electron-positron resilient collision phenomenon, which was highly recognized by "Nature," the UK's high-profile scientific journal.
In 1946, He gained admission to the Curie Laboratory at the University of Paris. Together with her husband, Qian Sanqiang, who made outstanding contributions to the establishment of nuclear science in China, she had done in-depth research on atomic fission and confirmed the phenomenon of "uranium fission three times and four times."
The couple returned to China in 1948 and devoted themselves to the construction of that country's nuclear physics research. By 1955, the Institute of Modern Physics directed by Qian Sanqiang had begun to take shape with the first team in new China for nuclear physics research.
After Qian died at the age of 79 in 1992, she continued to promote the development of China's high-energy physics until her senior years.
Famous Chinese nuclear physicist He Zehui, a senior academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, died Monday in Beijing at the age of 97, Chinanews.com reports.
Don't be confused by her first name! He Zehui was a woman.
Born in Suzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province, in 1914, He graduated from the Department of Physics at Tsinghua University in Beijing in 1936. She then studied ballistics at the Berlin University of Technology.
He earned a doctorate in engineering in 1940 after writing a dissertation on a new method for testing the speed of flying bullets.
She remained in Germany for several years, conducting nuclear physics research. She initially observed the commute stamina electron-positron resilient collision phenomenon, which was highly recognized by "Nature," the UK's high-profile scientific journal.
In 1946, He gained admission to the Curie Laboratory at the University of Paris. Together with her husband, Qian Sanqiang, who made outstanding contributions to the establishment of nuclear science in China, she had done in-depth research on atomic fission and confirmed the phenomenon of "uranium fission three times and four times."
The couple returned to China in 1948 and devoted themselves to the construction of that country's nuclear physics research. By 1955, the Institute of Modern Physics directed by Qian Sanqiang had begun to take shape with the first team in new China for nuclear physics research.
After Qian died at the age of 79 in 1992, she continued to promote the development of China's high-energy physics until her senior years.
MSU receives grant for nuclear physics program
The State News (Michigan): MSU receives grant for nuclear physics program
East Lansing, Michigan: MSU’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory will receive more than $4 million as part of a grant from the National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, federal government officials announced last week.
The university was awarded the grant — which will go toward funding MSU’s nuclear physics program — through a nationwide consortium started by the Department of Energy’s NNSA Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation.
The consortium pairs seven universities across the country based on their strength in various areas of nuclear science.
The program will focus on providing education and hands-on training for students related to the nation’s nuclear security mission, said Josh McConaha, deputy director of public affairs with the NNSA.
In total, the grant will award about $25 million to the program’s members over a five-year period. MSU will receive about $4.9 million total.
Specifically, MSU will be responsible for focusing on providing resources related to its applied nuclear physics department, McConaha said.
MSU was selected based on the strength of its top-ranked nuclear physics graduate program and its proven record for graduate student employment, McConaha said in an email.
“The people here in the lab are really among the best in the world at what they do,” said Zach Constan, the Cyclotron’s outreach coordinator. “Knowing that the U.S. wanted to have something like this, it makes perfect sense that it should be partly housed here.”
Constan said MSU educates about 10 percent of the nation’s nuclear physics graduate students, something which makes the school a logical choice.
“We’re educating the next generation of nuclear scientists,” Constan said. “When I see the success pipeline (at MSU), that’s amazing. We should absolutely be a part of that collaboration.”
Michael Thoennessen, the lab’s associate director for education and a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, said the grant gives the school the opportunity to expand.
“It will help with graduate education,” he said. “It will allow us to offer our students a better education.”
Some students who work at the facility were excited about the prospect of additional government funding.
“I think it’s very good because one of the primary things that we can take advantage of at the (lab) other than high-quality science is educating students,” said Andrew Klose, a nuclear chemistry graduate student. “It’s definitely exciting. Anytime you’re awarded any type of grant, it opens a lot of doors.”
East Lansing, Michigan: MSU’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory will receive more than $4 million as part of a grant from the National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, federal government officials announced last week.
The university was awarded the grant — which will go toward funding MSU’s nuclear physics program — through a nationwide consortium started by the Department of Energy’s NNSA Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation.
The consortium pairs seven universities across the country based on their strength in various areas of nuclear science.
The program will focus on providing education and hands-on training for students related to the nation’s nuclear security mission, said Josh McConaha, deputy director of public affairs with the NNSA.
In total, the grant will award about $25 million to the program’s members over a five-year period. MSU will receive about $4.9 million total.
Specifically, MSU will be responsible for focusing on providing resources related to its applied nuclear physics department, McConaha said.
MSU was selected based on the strength of its top-ranked nuclear physics graduate program and its proven record for graduate student employment, McConaha said in an email.
“The people here in the lab are really among the best in the world at what they do,” said Zach Constan, the Cyclotron’s outreach coordinator. “Knowing that the U.S. wanted to have something like this, it makes perfect sense that it should be partly housed here.”
Constan said MSU educates about 10 percent of the nation’s nuclear physics graduate students, something which makes the school a logical choice.
“We’re educating the next generation of nuclear scientists,” Constan said. “When I see the success pipeline (at MSU), that’s amazing. We should absolutely be a part of that collaboration.”
Michael Thoennessen, the lab’s associate director for education and a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, said the grant gives the school the opportunity to expand.
“It will help with graduate education,” he said. “It will allow us to offer our students a better education.”
Some students who work at the facility were excited about the prospect of additional government funding.
“I think it’s very good because one of the primary things that we can take advantage of at the (lab) other than high-quality science is educating students,” said Andrew Klose, a nuclear chemistry graduate student. “It’s definitely exciting. Anytime you’re awarded any type of grant, it opens a lot of doors.”
BARC sets up ‘virtual’ nuclear data physics centre
The Hindu: BARC sets up ‘virtual’ nuclear data physics centre
Bhabha Atomic Research Centre has set up a ‘virtual’ nuclear data physics centre to enable greater visibility of India’s research in this area at the global platform.
Department of Atomic Energy and Board of Research in Nuclear Science of the government of India have already sanctioned funds for three years (2011-2014) for the NDPCI, S Ganesan, Head of Nuclear Data Section, Reactor Physics Design Division and Project-in-Charge, NDPCI told PTI.
The basic nuclear data physics research is essential in shaping concepts of nuclear power of advanced reactor designs and safety, he said.
With BARC acting as the nodal agency, NDPCI, will serve as the main hub for overall coordination of nuclear data activities in India with members drawn from national laboratories and universities.
“The NDPCI at BARC is promoting the use of accurate nuclear data and its physics usage in all applications including in development of indigenous software for Monte Carlo codes and discrete ordinate codes for advanced reactor applications,” Mr. Ganesan said.
The nuclear scientist said India became the 14th member of the International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (NRDC) in 2008 after being invited to join the international network.
NRDC constitutes a worldwide cooperation of nuclear data centres under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria. The Network was established in the early sixties to coordinate the world-wide collection, compilation and dissemination of nuclear reaction data.
Last month, India participated as a full member of International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (NRDC) at the IAEA, Ganesan said.
“India has been carrying out a number of original nuclear data physics activities during the last six years. The members of NRDC were all in praise for BARC for these new initiatives in nuclear data physics and especially for contributing more than 200 Indian EXFOR (internationally agreed format for the Raw Experimental Numerical Nuclear Physics Data) entries based upon Indian nuclear physics experiments, since 2006,” he said.
Mr. Ganesan said the roadmap of NDPCI will cover a wide range of power and non-power applications including medical applications in the Indian context with a balance of nuclear data physics activities by a well-defined team of nuclear physicists, engineers, mathematicians, radio-chemists and software information management.
Introduction of EXFOR culture in people including in basic nuclear physics has become relatively an easier task with the new managerial initiatives of NDPCI holding phenomenally successful EXFOR workshops in different parts of India, he said.
NDPCI has been very successful in roping people from various fields (Nuclear Physics, Reactor and Radiochemistry Divisions of DAE’s basic research establishments and others) and students and staff from various universities across India.
“It is a very unique activity where both experimentalists and theoreticians were covered,” Mr. Ganesan said.
NDPCI is evolving a strong community of EXFOR compilers in India. Regular staff to perform EXFOR compilations is being planned, he said.
NDPCI is identifying university staff and awarding contracts on EXFOR compilations. The first such DAE-BRNS contract has already been awarded to Prof. Betylda Jyrwa, North Eastern University, Shillong, Meghalaya in May 2011, Mr. Ganesan said.
Since the discovery of neutron, there are more than 18,932 experimental data including neutron induced reaction, charged particle induced reactions and photon induced reaction. “India’s contribution of 200 entries is considered very significant by the international community,” Mr. Ganesan said.
Stressing on the importance of NDPCI, he said even after more than six decades since the discovery of nuclear fission process, the basic nuclear physics experimental data continues to remain more uncertain than the target accuracies needed by reactor designers who rigorously desire to propagate error in simulations.
Therefore, experimental critical facility programme to enable integral validation studies is also an essential part of any serious nuclear programme to speed up implementation of nuclear energy, he said.
“This programme requires covariance data at differential and integral level,” Mr. Ganesan emphasised.
Basic physics understanding and better data physics of nuclear interactions continue to be rigorously sought by nuclear design communities in order to extrapolate conditions in power plants such as higher burn-up and higher temperatures, which are not covered in the room temperature fresh core one-to-one mock experiments.
“The safety and operational requirements of existing power plants have been engineered with a number of one-to-one mockup experiments providing adequate and conservative safety margins,” he said
Yet another ongoing activity of NDPCI is criticality benchmarking of reactors which helps in integrally validating nuclear data and methods of computer simulations.
In 2005, Indian scientists completed successfully the criticality benchmarking of the 30 kilowatt KAMINI research reactor (the only U-233 fuelled reactor operating in the world) operating at Kalpakkam which was completed, peer reviewed and published in the International Handbook of Evaluated Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments (ICSBEP).
“Interestingly after India joined the select band of countries and contributed Kamini Benchmark, the Indian scientists are able to access all the benchmark specifications for over 4,400 experimental benchmark documents of other countries,” Mr. Ganesan added.
In 2008, the international benchmarking of PURNIMA-II (Uranium 233-nitrate solution) reactor has been completed and already accepted by the IAEA and US department of Energy.
Presently, India has undertaken the international benchmarking procedures for the experimental reactor PURNIMA-I. The benchmarking of PURNIMA-I, India’s first fast reactor fuelled with plutonium oxide that went critical in 1972 was completed recently and critical international peer review is in progress.
“The benchmark specifications are intended for use by criticality safety engineers to validate calculation techniques safety margins for operations with fissile material,” he added.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Beginning Physics, Pt 1
Before we can get to Nuclear physics, we need to start with the basics.
The first people to attempt to investigate what made the world - and all that was in it - tick were the ancient Greeks. Curious men, who had the leisure time to do so, began a systematic gathering of knowledge through human reasoning.
Those who attempted this rationalistic search for understanding, rejecting the aid of intuition, inspiration or revelation, or other non-rational sources of information, were called philosophers (from the Greek for "philo-lover and sophist - wisdom.")
Philosophers came in two broad groups - those who turned within to seek an understanding of human behavior, of ethics and morality, of motivations and responses. The second group were those investigated their surroundings, an investigation of nature, and thus they became called natural philosophers (by English speakers who came long after!).
The modern word that has taken the place of "natural philosophy" - science - did not come into use until well into the nineteenth century. That is why today,the highest university degree one can achieve is a "Doctor of Philosophy."
The word "natural" is from the Latin. The Greek word for "natural" is "physikos."
The term "physics" therefore, is a brief form of natural philosophy, and, in its original meaning, included all of science.
However, as the field of science broadened and deepened, and as the information gathered grew more voluminous, natural philosophers had to specialize, taking one segment or another of scientific endeabour as their chosen field of work. The specialities received names of their own and were often subtracted from the once universal domain of physics.
Thus, mathematics, astronomy, geology, chemistry, and biology, once all considered part of physics, became sciences in their own right.
The term "physics" then came to be used to describe the study of those portions of nature that remained after the other specialties had been subtracted. For that reason the word has come to cover a rather heterogeneous field and is not as easy to define as it might be.
TO be continued...
_______________
Bibliography
Understanding Physics, by Isaac Asimov
The first people to attempt to investigate what made the world - and all that was in it - tick were the ancient Greeks. Curious men, who had the leisure time to do so, began a systematic gathering of knowledge through human reasoning.
Those who attempted this rationalistic search for understanding, rejecting the aid of intuition, inspiration or revelation, or other non-rational sources of information, were called philosophers (from the Greek for "philo-lover and sophist - wisdom.")
Philosophers came in two broad groups - those who turned within to seek an understanding of human behavior, of ethics and morality, of motivations and responses. The second group were those investigated their surroundings, an investigation of nature, and thus they became called natural philosophers (by English speakers who came long after!).
The modern word that has taken the place of "natural philosophy" - science - did not come into use until well into the nineteenth century. That is why today,the highest university degree one can achieve is a "Doctor of Philosophy."
The word "natural" is from the Latin. The Greek word for "natural" is "physikos."
The term "physics" therefore, is a brief form of natural philosophy, and, in its original meaning, included all of science.
However, as the field of science broadened and deepened, and as the information gathered grew more voluminous, natural philosophers had to specialize, taking one segment or another of scientific endeabour as their chosen field of work. The specialities received names of their own and were often subtracted from the once universal domain of physics.
Thus, mathematics, astronomy, geology, chemistry, and biology, once all considered part of physics, became sciences in their own right.
The term "physics" then came to be used to describe the study of those portions of nature that remained after the other specialties had been subtracted. For that reason the word has come to cover a rather heterogeneous field and is not as easy to define as it might be.
TO be continued...
_______________
Bibliography
Understanding Physics, by Isaac Asimov
Friday, June 17, 2011
Energy from rubbish
TheVoiceofRussia: Energy from rubbish
"Symptomatically, both of today’s winners of the Global Energy prize get their awards for finding new ways to save energy and make the economy more effective in energy terms. This means that the efficiency of energy use is of prime global importance in this day and age."
That was President Dmitry Medvedev speaking at a St Petersburg ceremony to award the Global Energy prizes to the American physicist Professor Arthur Rosenfeld and his Russian colleague Professor Philipp Rutberg, of St Petersburg’s Electrophysics Institute.
We offer extracts from an award speech by Professor Rutberg:
"In recent decades, each major breakthrough in fundamental science quickly produced spin-offs in the form of commercial applications. This was the case with discoveries in nuclear physics, and this is now the case with achievements in the physics of plasma."
A stream of low-temperature plasma heated to between 2,000 and 10,000 Celsius – the surface of the Sun is heated to 6,000, for a reference point – can, among other things, successfully decompose household rubbish. It does this in an environmentally-friendly way which also generates fuel:
"Instead of going into landfills or polluting the atmosphere after incineration, rubbish is now a valuable energy source. Treated with plasma, it yields a combustible carbohydrate gas which can be used for fuelling gas turbines and for producing liquid motor fuels."
The technology is already in commercial use in Japan, the United States and countries in Europe. Experts believe it offers a good way to augment green energy supply around the world.
The Global Energy prizes have been awarded annually since 2003. They are widely seen as energy science equivalents of the Nobel Prizes. Each winner gets a cheque for a million American dollars.
"Symptomatically, both of today’s winners of the Global Energy prize get their awards for finding new ways to save energy and make the economy more effective in energy terms. This means that the efficiency of energy use is of prime global importance in this day and age."
That was President Dmitry Medvedev speaking at a St Petersburg ceremony to award the Global Energy prizes to the American physicist Professor Arthur Rosenfeld and his Russian colleague Professor Philipp Rutberg, of St Petersburg’s Electrophysics Institute.
We offer extracts from an award speech by Professor Rutberg:
"In recent decades, each major breakthrough in fundamental science quickly produced spin-offs in the form of commercial applications. This was the case with discoveries in nuclear physics, and this is now the case with achievements in the physics of plasma."
A stream of low-temperature plasma heated to between 2,000 and 10,000 Celsius – the surface of the Sun is heated to 6,000, for a reference point – can, among other things, successfully decompose household rubbish. It does this in an environmentally-friendly way which also generates fuel:
"Instead of going into landfills or polluting the atmosphere after incineration, rubbish is now a valuable energy source. Treated with plasma, it yields a combustible carbohydrate gas which can be used for fuelling gas turbines and for producing liquid motor fuels."
The technology is already in commercial use in Japan, the United States and countries in Europe. Experts believe it offers a good way to augment green energy supply around the world.
The Global Energy prizes have been awarded annually since 2003. They are widely seen as energy science equivalents of the Nobel Prizes. Each winner gets a cheque for a million American dollars.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Argonne Physicist Receives 2011 Innovator Award
DigitalJournal: Argonne Physicist Receives 2011 Innovator Award
Chicago (PRWEB) June 16, 2011
Often when we hear of someone winning an award for beauty and charm we think of a pageant, but in this case, it is for groundbreaking work in physics. Charm and beauty are properties of quarks, the fundamental constituents of ordinary matter. Kawtar Hafidi of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory studies their interactions, enabling a deeper insight into particles and forces that build our universe; she has been named this year's annual Innovator Award winner by the Chicago chapter of the Association for Women in Science (AWIS).
"We had an outstanding group of nominees this year," said Joy Ramos, AWIS-Chicago president. "What really stood out was Kawtar's innovative work in nuclei research, in addition to her strong commitment to mentoring and service, especially to women in science."
Hafidi is an experimental nuclear physicist, working in the medium energy physics group at Argonne. Her work focuses on how quarks are formed, how they combine and how they interact to better understand the structure and interactions of protons and neutrons, the basic building blocks of everyday matter.
"The nucleus is my lab," said Hafidi. "I am fascinated by subatomic particles and the forces that hold them together."
She and her colleagues have discovered new evidence of color transparency, a phenomena in which a hadron – a bound state of quarks such as a proton or neutron – forms an exotic, very short-lived state that is invisible to other matter. While more measurements are necessary to fully understand these exotic states of matter, Hafidi is excited about the discovery and its implications for the formation of matter.
Advances in nuclear physics have led to many useful technologies, from smoke detectors to advanced medical imaging and treatment such as PET, MRI scans and proton radiation therapy.
Hafidi also leads Argonne's Women in Science and Technology (WIST) program. The WIST program provides leadership and resources to help advance the success of women, encourages professional growth and development and works to promote diversity at all levels within Argonne to create a premier institution for research and development.
“Today’s technology-driven world offers a nearly endless list of amazing opportunities for women everywhere,” added Hafidi. “We are working to promote the success of women today while inspiring young women to become our next generation of scientists and engineers."
WIST also initiates activities to engage young women and students to consider careers in science and technology. Argonne's Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day and Science Careers in Search of Women Conference provide an opportunity for middle school and high school students to explore and experience the many aspects of science and engineering in a fun and interactive way.
Hafidi is a working mother who was born in Morocco where she completed her bachelor's degree in theoretical physics at Mohammed V. University. She earned her master’s degree in nuclear physics and a Ph.D. in physics from the prestigious Paris Sud University in Orsay before coming to Argonne as a postdoctoral appointee. She was promoted to staff scientist in 2002 and has since become chair of the American Physical Society Committee on the Status of Women in Physics and has been awarded the U.S. DOE Office of Science Outstanding Mentor award.
"If I do my job well, we will have more scientists, better scientists.” Hafidi added.
Hafidi will be presented with the award at a dinner on June 23, 2011 at Reza's Restaurant in Chicago. As the fifth annual recipient of the award, she is also the second Argonne scientist to receive it.
The Association for Women in Science was founded in 1971 and is the premiere leadership organization advocating the interests of women in science and technology. The Chicago chapter was one of the first AWIS chapters and it continues to strengthen Chicago’s network of scientists by organizing career development, leadership, social, and outreach programs in partnership with other institutions in the community. The Annual AWIS Chicago Innovator Award recognizes achievements in science in the Chicagoland area.
Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science
Chicago (PRWEB) June 16, 2011
Often when we hear of someone winning an award for beauty and charm we think of a pageant, but in this case, it is for groundbreaking work in physics. Charm and beauty are properties of quarks, the fundamental constituents of ordinary matter. Kawtar Hafidi of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory studies their interactions, enabling a deeper insight into particles and forces that build our universe; she has been named this year's annual Innovator Award winner by the Chicago chapter of the Association for Women in Science (AWIS).
"We had an outstanding group of nominees this year," said Joy Ramos, AWIS-Chicago president. "What really stood out was Kawtar's innovative work in nuclei research, in addition to her strong commitment to mentoring and service, especially to women in science."
Hafidi is an experimental nuclear physicist, working in the medium energy physics group at Argonne. Her work focuses on how quarks are formed, how they combine and how they interact to better understand the structure and interactions of protons and neutrons, the basic building blocks of everyday matter.
"The nucleus is my lab," said Hafidi. "I am fascinated by subatomic particles and the forces that hold them together."
She and her colleagues have discovered new evidence of color transparency, a phenomena in which a hadron – a bound state of quarks such as a proton or neutron – forms an exotic, very short-lived state that is invisible to other matter. While more measurements are necessary to fully understand these exotic states of matter, Hafidi is excited about the discovery and its implications for the formation of matter.
Advances in nuclear physics have led to many useful technologies, from smoke detectors to advanced medical imaging and treatment such as PET, MRI scans and proton radiation therapy.
Hafidi also leads Argonne's Women in Science and Technology (WIST) program. The WIST program provides leadership and resources to help advance the success of women, encourages professional growth and development and works to promote diversity at all levels within Argonne to create a premier institution for research and development.
“Today’s technology-driven world offers a nearly endless list of amazing opportunities for women everywhere,” added Hafidi. “We are working to promote the success of women today while inspiring young women to become our next generation of scientists and engineers."
WIST also initiates activities to engage young women and students to consider careers in science and technology. Argonne's Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day and Science Careers in Search of Women Conference provide an opportunity for middle school and high school students to explore and experience the many aspects of science and engineering in a fun and interactive way.
Hafidi is a working mother who was born in Morocco where she completed her bachelor's degree in theoretical physics at Mohammed V. University. She earned her master’s degree in nuclear physics and a Ph.D. in physics from the prestigious Paris Sud University in Orsay before coming to Argonne as a postdoctoral appointee. She was promoted to staff scientist in 2002 and has since become chair of the American Physical Society Committee on the Status of Women in Physics and has been awarded the U.S. DOE Office of Science Outstanding Mentor award.
"If I do my job well, we will have more scientists, better scientists.” Hafidi added.
Hafidi will be presented with the award at a dinner on June 23, 2011 at Reza's Restaurant in Chicago. As the fifth annual recipient of the award, she is also the second Argonne scientist to receive it.
The Association for Women in Science was founded in 1971 and is the premiere leadership organization advocating the interests of women in science and technology. The Chicago chapter was one of the first AWIS chapters and it continues to strengthen Chicago’s network of scientists by organizing career development, leadership, social, and outreach programs in partnership with other institutions in the community. The Annual AWIS Chicago Innovator Award recognizes achievements in science in the Chicagoland area.
Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science
Edward Lantz, nuclear physicist
The Washington Post: Edward Lantz, nuclear physicist
Edward Lantz, 88, a nuclear physicist who worked as a engineer for NASA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, died of pneumonia April 29 at his home in Montgomery Village.
Mr. Lantz joined NASA in 1956. He worked on propulsion and launching systems and participated in the Apollo spaceflight program that landed the first men on the moon in July 1969.
He later worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before retiring in 1987.
Edward Lantz was born in Wooster, Ohio. He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II and also served during the Korean War.
He was a 1949 physics graduate of what is now Case Western Reserve University. He received a master’s degree in physics from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.
Survivors include his wife of 63 years, Charlotte Mangas Lantz of Montgomery Village; a son, Larry Lantz, also of Montgomery Village; and two grandchildren.
Edward Lantz, 88, a nuclear physicist who worked as a engineer for NASA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, died of pneumonia April 29 at his home in Montgomery Village.
Mr. Lantz joined NASA in 1956. He worked on propulsion and launching systems and participated in the Apollo spaceflight program that landed the first men on the moon in July 1969.
He later worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before retiring in 1987.
Edward Lantz was born in Wooster, Ohio. He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II and also served during the Korean War.
He was a 1949 physics graduate of what is now Case Western Reserve University. He received a master’s degree in physics from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.
Survivors include his wife of 63 years, Charlotte Mangas Lantz of Montgomery Village; a son, Larry Lantz, also of Montgomery Village; and two grandchildren.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Why India's fast breeder programme is cutting edge
A nearly 200 tonne nuclear reactor safety vessel being erected at Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam
Rediff.com: Why India's fast breeder programme is cutting edge
After three decades of hard work, and despite the devastating tsunami of 2004, the 500 megawatt Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam is coming up at a furious pace, says Shivanand Kanavi who visited it recently. It also happens to be the first tsunami-ready reactor in India.
Fast breeders have entered journalistic and parliamentary lexicon during the debates on the India-United States nuclear deal.
According to an apocryphal story, a venerable member of Parliament, dazed by the sudden influx of nuclear physics in the Central Hall of Parliament, did not want to be left behind in the sound byte game and said, "We are good at fast breeders. That's how we became one billion-strong"!
Be that as it may, the fast breeder technology, in its essence, is more than 50 years old. Most people do not know that the first ever kilowatt of power from a nuclear reactor, anywhere in the world, came in 1951 from a fast breeder reactor, Experimental Breeder Reactor I at Idaho Falls in the US.
So, what are these new-fangled objects, the fast breeder reactors? If we care to struggle with a little bit of nuclear physics, we might profit from it. Here are a few simple incentives to cross the knowledge hump.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Nuclear physics center in Magurele moves closer to implementation
This news article is from May 30:
Businessreview.ro: Nuclear physics center in Magurele moves closer to implementation
A total of 28 companies, including 11 Romanian ones, have so far expressed interest in the Extreme Light Infrastructure – Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) project, which will mark a premiere in physics: the intersection of a high-power laser beam and a brilliant high-energy gamma beam.
By Otilia Haraga
ELI-NP is one of the three pillars of ELI, or Extreme Light Infrastructure. It will be built near Bucharest, at the premises of the Horia Hulubei National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering (HHNIPNE). The other two pillars will be built in the Czech Republic (the ELI Beamlines Facility) and Hungary (the Attosecond facility).
Interested companies include Thales, Quantel, Cristal Laser, Continuum, Amplitude, IBM, Gerb, XIA, Anchor and DILO, according to Nicolae Victor Zamfir, GM of the HHNIPNE. The International Atomic Energy Agency and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency are also interested in some nuclear applications, he said.
In December 2010, the Romanian government made ELI-NP a priority project for Romania.
“This infrastructure we hope will not only stop the brain drain but will reverse it. I’m waiting for the moment when the German authorities complain that too many Germans are leaving for Romania,” joked Zamfir during a conference organized by KPMG on the subject.
Romania was chosen to host ELI-NP because of the know-how available here. “There is expertise in Magurele both in the domain of lasers and nuclear physics. After Germany, France and Great Britain, the best expertise in nuclear physics can be found in Romania. You cannot build something in a place where you don’t have expertise,” Zamfir told BR.
The project is expected to make Romania an important scientific hub for talent and know-how. It should also bring international visibility, and create 214 new high-qualified jobs in research and tech support.
The center will be based in Magurele, near Bucharest. “Why the Bucharest-Ilfov region? If a research infrastructure is built in the middle of nowhere, no scientists will want to go there. You also need infrastructure and a social life. A capital offers this kind of thing,” said Zamfir.
The project’s prospects look good, said the GM. “There is a chance that the Romanian government will not approve the project and also that our project is not good enough. However, the chances are close to nil because we have already sent the draft project for a preliminary evaluation in January-March. It was scrutinized and all the results were extraordinarily positive.” This was carried out by JASPERS (Joint Assistance to Support Projects in European Regions).
The total cost of the ELI-NP project in Romania will be EUR 280 million, excluding VAT. Of this sum, the state has to cover 17 percent from its budget. “The project in Romania is the most important of the three because it is the most complex and has the highest value,” said Zamfir.
The EUR 280 million will be divided as follows: buildings EUR 65 million, lasers EUR 80 million, gamma beam EUR 60 million, equipment EUR 30 million, contingences EUR 15 million and other expenses about EUR 30 million.
“We are limited by two factors: one is that structural funds at this stage should be spent by 2015. Also, what this project requires in terms of tools – the laser and the gamma beam – have to be conceived, you cannot buy them from anywhere. This means R&D. The time that physicists believe is necessary to develop these instruments is at least three and a half years,” said Zamfir.
However, there will also be operational costs to cover. “This infrastructure needs to be maintained. We estimated the necessary power at 5 MW, for instance. This costs a great deal. The feasibility study stipulates a green source of energy with 100 heat pumps around so that the energy is provided via heat exchange. This would be the first time in Europe when you can do this kind of thing at industrial level,” Zamfir told BR.
The high costs will be covered by national and European funds. “This started and will remain a European project and the European Commission needs to get involved in it. One third would be covered from the state budget, a third from Brussels and one third from private projects where companies would need to carry out certain experiments and pay for them,” he added.
Businessreview.ro: Nuclear physics center in Magurele moves closer to implementation
A total of 28 companies, including 11 Romanian ones, have so far expressed interest in the Extreme Light Infrastructure – Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) project, which will mark a premiere in physics: the intersection of a high-power laser beam and a brilliant high-energy gamma beam.
By Otilia Haraga
ELI-NP is one of the three pillars of ELI, or Extreme Light Infrastructure. It will be built near Bucharest, at the premises of the Horia Hulubei National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering (HHNIPNE). The other two pillars will be built in the Czech Republic (the ELI Beamlines Facility) and Hungary (the Attosecond facility).
Interested companies include Thales, Quantel, Cristal Laser, Continuum, Amplitude, IBM, Gerb, XIA, Anchor and DILO, according to Nicolae Victor Zamfir, GM of the HHNIPNE. The International Atomic Energy Agency and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency are also interested in some nuclear applications, he said.
In December 2010, the Romanian government made ELI-NP a priority project for Romania.
“This infrastructure we hope will not only stop the brain drain but will reverse it. I’m waiting for the moment when the German authorities complain that too many Germans are leaving for Romania,” joked Zamfir during a conference organized by KPMG on the subject.
Romania was chosen to host ELI-NP because of the know-how available here. “There is expertise in Magurele both in the domain of lasers and nuclear physics. After Germany, France and Great Britain, the best expertise in nuclear physics can be found in Romania. You cannot build something in a place where you don’t have expertise,” Zamfir told BR.
The project is expected to make Romania an important scientific hub for talent and know-how. It should also bring international visibility, and create 214 new high-qualified jobs in research and tech support.
The center will be based in Magurele, near Bucharest. “Why the Bucharest-Ilfov region? If a research infrastructure is built in the middle of nowhere, no scientists will want to go there. You also need infrastructure and a social life. A capital offers this kind of thing,” said Zamfir.
The project’s prospects look good, said the GM. “There is a chance that the Romanian government will not approve the project and also that our project is not good enough. However, the chances are close to nil because we have already sent the draft project for a preliminary evaluation in January-March. It was scrutinized and all the results were extraordinarily positive.” This was carried out by JASPERS (Joint Assistance to Support Projects in European Regions).
The total cost of the ELI-NP project in Romania will be EUR 280 million, excluding VAT. Of this sum, the state has to cover 17 percent from its budget. “The project in Romania is the most important of the three because it is the most complex and has the highest value,” said Zamfir.
The EUR 280 million will be divided as follows: buildings EUR 65 million, lasers EUR 80 million, gamma beam EUR 60 million, equipment EUR 30 million, contingences EUR 15 million and other expenses about EUR 30 million.
“We are limited by two factors: one is that structural funds at this stage should be spent by 2015. Also, what this project requires in terms of tools – the laser and the gamma beam – have to be conceived, you cannot buy them from anywhere. This means R&D. The time that physicists believe is necessary to develop these instruments is at least three and a half years,” said Zamfir.
However, there will also be operational costs to cover. “This infrastructure needs to be maintained. We estimated the necessary power at 5 MW, for instance. This costs a great deal. The feasibility study stipulates a green source of energy with 100 heat pumps around so that the energy is provided via heat exchange. This would be the first time in Europe when you can do this kind of thing at industrial level,” Zamfir told BR.
The high costs will be covered by national and European funds. “This started and will remain a European project and the European Commission needs to get involved in it. One third would be covered from the state budget, a third from Brussels and one third from private projects where companies would need to carry out certain experiments and pay for them,” he added.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Periodic table gains two new elements
TGDaily: Periodic table gains two new elements
With the atomic numbers 114 and 116, they have the temporary titles of ununquadium and ununhexium. Now they've been offically recognized, their discoverers have the opportunity to give them permanent names.
They're likely to be named flerovium, after the Soviet nuclear physicist Georgy Flyorov, and moscovium, after the Russian capital.
Both elements were created at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, near Moscow, in collaboration with the Lawrence Livermore national laboratory in California. In the past, the two organizations have had some disagreement about naming new, jointly-discovered elements, but it seems this time the Californians are being a little more laid-back.
The new elements aren't exactly kicking about the place; both are heavy elements created in a particle accelerator by smashing together ther nuclei of other elements. Thus, 114 was created by combining calcium with plutonium, and 116 by combining calcium and curium.
They're both highly radioactive, decaying in well under a second - making studying their properties rather difficult.
The last element to be added to the periodic table was copernicium, approved in 2009.
And, as it happens, three more may soon be joining the party. Scientists also believe they've found the elements representing positions elements 113, 115, and 118 in the periodic table.
But governing bodies the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) say these don't yet reach the criteria neccessary for acceptance.
With the atomic numbers 114 and 116, they have the temporary titles of ununquadium and ununhexium. Now they've been offically recognized, their discoverers have the opportunity to give them permanent names.
They're likely to be named flerovium, after the Soviet nuclear physicist Georgy Flyorov, and moscovium, after the Russian capital.
Both elements were created at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, near Moscow, in collaboration with the Lawrence Livermore national laboratory in California. In the past, the two organizations have had some disagreement about naming new, jointly-discovered elements, but it seems this time the Californians are being a little more laid-back.
The new elements aren't exactly kicking about the place; both are heavy elements created in a particle accelerator by smashing together ther nuclei of other elements. Thus, 114 was created by combining calcium with plutonium, and 116 by combining calcium and curium.
They're both highly radioactive, decaying in well under a second - making studying their properties rather difficult.
The last element to be added to the periodic table was copernicium, approved in 2009.
And, as it happens, three more may soon be joining the party. Scientists also believe they've found the elements representing positions elements 113, 115, and 118 in the periodic table.
But governing bodies the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) say these don't yet reach the criteria neccessary for acceptance.
Unique Polish Detector Can Observe Rare Decays of Nickel Nuclei
ScienceDaily: Unique Polish Detector Can Observe Rare Decays of Nickel Nuclei
ScienceDaily (June 9, 2011) — Conducting research on the phenomenon of radioactivity is the only way of gaining insight into the properties of some atomic nuclei. Polish scientists from the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw have built a unique detector that has made it possible to observe atypical decays of one of the isotopes of nickel, during which two protons were emitted simultaneously.
An article on the subject will appear in the journal Physical Review C.
Isotopes are varieties of a chemical element that share the same number of protons in the nucleus but differ in the number of neutrons. The mass number is the total number of neutrons and protons. Nickel has 28 protons in the nucleus and at least 30 isotopes, including five stable ones, for example nickel-58. Isotopes of nickel in which the equilibrium between the number of protons and neutrons is disturbed the most are hard to obtain and even harder to study -- they are unstable and decay quickly, transforming into nuclei of other elements. Scientists from the Nuclear Spectroscopy Division at the Institute of Experimental Physics (IFD) of the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw (FUW) have undertaken research into nickel-48, a highly peculiar isotope. It has 28 protons and only 20 neutrons in its nucleus. It is the most neutron deficient nucleus ever studied. Such an isotope "lives" only 2 thousandths of a second and then decays. The research by the Polish scientists from FUW has shown that the most frequent decay mode of nickel-48 is two-proton emission.
Protons ejected from a nucleus carry information about its internal structure. In order to gain insight into the structure, the correlations between the emitted particles are studied by observing their tracks. An appropriate device is therefore necessary. "The detectors used earlier recorded electronic signals in which all the information about the correlation between the two protons was lost," says Prof. Marek Pfützner from the Nuclear Spectroscopy Division IFD FUW, head coordinator of the research. In the detection method developed by Polish scientists images are recorded by a camera, making the results easy to interpret -- one can simply see what happened. The cutting-edge detector was built in Warsaw according to the design of Prof. Wojciech Dominik from the Particles and Fundamental Interactions Division IFD FUW. The pioneering device not only makes it possible to gather information about the tracks of charged particles moving inside a chamber but also generates their striking visual image. The experiment using the Polish detector was conducted in the U.S. at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory in Michigan with the collaboration of the University of Tennessee and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The process of the production of unstable nickel has several stages. Atoms of the stable isotope nickel-58 are accelerated in a cyclotron and subsequently directed towards a revolving nickel target containing a natural mixture of stable isotopes of the element. The collisions cause nuclear reactions and a beam of various isotopes of different elements is created. It falls into a magnetic separator, which makes a selection on the basis of mass number. The selected beam falls into a detector filled with a mixture of gases -- helium, argon and nitrogen. There, as a result of the stopping power of the gaseous medium, the energy is dissipated and the atoms come to a halt. The radioactive decay of their nuclei takes place. The whole event is recorded by a camera. The probability of the formation of a nickel-48 nucleus is very small. Which is why during 156 hours of measurements, when 1017 (ten with seventeen zeros!) projectiles hit the target , only six atoms of this rare isotope were observed. The nuclei of four of them decayed by two-proton emission. The rest underwent a different transformation.
"The simultaneous two-proton emission is a very rare phenomenon -- so far it has only been observed in three other atomic nuclei: magnesium-19, zinc-54 and iron-45," says Zenon Janas, PhD, co-author of the experiment. It was also the physicists from Warsaw that observed the two-proton decay of iron. "The possibility of studying such rare decays, providing rich insight into the internal structure of nuclei, has a great learning value," adds Prof. Pfützner. "It can make it possible to verify hypotheses and models describing this still elusive area of matter that makes up the world around us and ourselves."
"Research in physics of nuclei has a long tradition at the University of Warsaw -- first works in the field date back as early as the 1930s," says Prof. Teresa Rząca-Urban, Dean of FUW, a nuclear physics herself. Before the war, such scientists as Leonard Sosnowski and Andrzej Sołtan, who put the first Polish accelerator into operation in 1934, were at the core of nuclear physics at the University of Warsaw. After the war, Jerzy Pniewski and Marian Danysz gained renown for the discovery of hypernuclei -- atomic nuclei containing unstable particles of matter different from the one that surrounds us. Today, nuclear physicists from Warsaw participate in large international experiments, and the successes of Prof. Pfützner's group show that they can also put forward and carry out their own interesting projects and build the equipment necessary for their realization. The University of Warsaw also has its own large research device -- a heavy ion cyclotron used for research in nuclear and atomic physics and for medical applications.
Nuclear physicists do not limit themselves to fundamental research but also try to meet the current economic needs. Already in November the University of Warsaw introduces new "Nuclear power engineering and nuclear chemistry" interdisciplinary studies, a joint effort of the Faculties of Physics and Chemistry. The introduction of the new interdisciplinary studies focused on nuclear power engineering is related to the expected construction of the first Polish nuclear power plant and the need to train an adequate number of specialists prepared to tackle various aspects of its operation. The curriculum of the studies focuses, among others, on issues related to the production, storage and recycling of reactor fuel. "Students will also gain knowledge of physical phenomena, chemical processes as well as legal and administrative aspects related to the functioning of a nuclear power plant," explains Przemysław Olbratowski, PhD, coordinator of the new interdisciplinary studies.
This year also sees the centenary of the awarding of the Nobel Prize in chemistry to Maria Skłodowska-Curie and the centenary of the discovery of the atomic nucleus. In order to celebrate the anniversaries, Prof. Marek Pfützner organizes "The legacy of Maria Skłodowska-Curie -- 100 years after the discovery of the atomic nucleus" conference. It takes place between 11th and 18th September 2011 in Piaski, Mazury. The great-grandson of our Noble Laureate -- French astrophysicist Yves Langevin has confirmed his presence at the event. The opening lecture will be delivered by Prof. Andrzej Kajetan Wróblewski -- eminent physicist, popularizer and scholar of the history of science.
ScienceDaily (June 9, 2011) — Conducting research on the phenomenon of radioactivity is the only way of gaining insight into the properties of some atomic nuclei. Polish scientists from the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw have built a unique detector that has made it possible to observe atypical decays of one of the isotopes of nickel, during which two protons were emitted simultaneously.
An article on the subject will appear in the journal Physical Review C.
Isotopes are varieties of a chemical element that share the same number of protons in the nucleus but differ in the number of neutrons. The mass number is the total number of neutrons and protons. Nickel has 28 protons in the nucleus and at least 30 isotopes, including five stable ones, for example nickel-58. Isotopes of nickel in which the equilibrium between the number of protons and neutrons is disturbed the most are hard to obtain and even harder to study -- they are unstable and decay quickly, transforming into nuclei of other elements. Scientists from the Nuclear Spectroscopy Division at the Institute of Experimental Physics (IFD) of the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw (FUW) have undertaken research into nickel-48, a highly peculiar isotope. It has 28 protons and only 20 neutrons in its nucleus. It is the most neutron deficient nucleus ever studied. Such an isotope "lives" only 2 thousandths of a second and then decays. The research by the Polish scientists from FUW has shown that the most frequent decay mode of nickel-48 is two-proton emission.
Protons ejected from a nucleus carry information about its internal structure. In order to gain insight into the structure, the correlations between the emitted particles are studied by observing their tracks. An appropriate device is therefore necessary. "The detectors used earlier recorded electronic signals in which all the information about the correlation between the two protons was lost," says Prof. Marek Pfützner from the Nuclear Spectroscopy Division IFD FUW, head coordinator of the research. In the detection method developed by Polish scientists images are recorded by a camera, making the results easy to interpret -- one can simply see what happened. The cutting-edge detector was built in Warsaw according to the design of Prof. Wojciech Dominik from the Particles and Fundamental Interactions Division IFD FUW. The pioneering device not only makes it possible to gather information about the tracks of charged particles moving inside a chamber but also generates their striking visual image. The experiment using the Polish detector was conducted in the U.S. at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory in Michigan with the collaboration of the University of Tennessee and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The process of the production of unstable nickel has several stages. Atoms of the stable isotope nickel-58 are accelerated in a cyclotron and subsequently directed towards a revolving nickel target containing a natural mixture of stable isotopes of the element. The collisions cause nuclear reactions and a beam of various isotopes of different elements is created. It falls into a magnetic separator, which makes a selection on the basis of mass number. The selected beam falls into a detector filled with a mixture of gases -- helium, argon and nitrogen. There, as a result of the stopping power of the gaseous medium, the energy is dissipated and the atoms come to a halt. The radioactive decay of their nuclei takes place. The whole event is recorded by a camera. The probability of the formation of a nickel-48 nucleus is very small. Which is why during 156 hours of measurements, when 1017 (ten with seventeen zeros!) projectiles hit the target , only six atoms of this rare isotope were observed. The nuclei of four of them decayed by two-proton emission. The rest underwent a different transformation.
"The simultaneous two-proton emission is a very rare phenomenon -- so far it has only been observed in three other atomic nuclei: magnesium-19, zinc-54 and iron-45," says Zenon Janas, PhD, co-author of the experiment. It was also the physicists from Warsaw that observed the two-proton decay of iron. "The possibility of studying such rare decays, providing rich insight into the internal structure of nuclei, has a great learning value," adds Prof. Pfützner. "It can make it possible to verify hypotheses and models describing this still elusive area of matter that makes up the world around us and ourselves."
"Research in physics of nuclei has a long tradition at the University of Warsaw -- first works in the field date back as early as the 1930s," says Prof. Teresa Rząca-Urban, Dean of FUW, a nuclear physics herself. Before the war, such scientists as Leonard Sosnowski and Andrzej Sołtan, who put the first Polish accelerator into operation in 1934, were at the core of nuclear physics at the University of Warsaw. After the war, Jerzy Pniewski and Marian Danysz gained renown for the discovery of hypernuclei -- atomic nuclei containing unstable particles of matter different from the one that surrounds us. Today, nuclear physicists from Warsaw participate in large international experiments, and the successes of Prof. Pfützner's group show that they can also put forward and carry out their own interesting projects and build the equipment necessary for their realization. The University of Warsaw also has its own large research device -- a heavy ion cyclotron used for research in nuclear and atomic physics and for medical applications.
Nuclear physicists do not limit themselves to fundamental research but also try to meet the current economic needs. Already in November the University of Warsaw introduces new "Nuclear power engineering and nuclear chemistry" interdisciplinary studies, a joint effort of the Faculties of Physics and Chemistry. The introduction of the new interdisciplinary studies focused on nuclear power engineering is related to the expected construction of the first Polish nuclear power plant and the need to train an adequate number of specialists prepared to tackle various aspects of its operation. The curriculum of the studies focuses, among others, on issues related to the production, storage and recycling of reactor fuel. "Students will also gain knowledge of physical phenomena, chemical processes as well as legal and administrative aspects related to the functioning of a nuclear power plant," explains Przemysław Olbratowski, PhD, coordinator of the new interdisciplinary studies.
This year also sees the centenary of the awarding of the Nobel Prize in chemistry to Maria Skłodowska-Curie and the centenary of the discovery of the atomic nucleus. In order to celebrate the anniversaries, Prof. Marek Pfützner organizes "The legacy of Maria Skłodowska-Curie -- 100 years after the discovery of the atomic nucleus" conference. It takes place between 11th and 18th September 2011 in Piaski, Mazury. The great-grandson of our Noble Laureate -- French astrophysicist Yves Langevin has confirmed his presence at the event. The opening lecture will be delivered by Prof. Andrzej Kajetan Wróblewski -- eminent physicist, popularizer and scholar of the history of science.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
A different kind of Fermi problem
PhysicsCentral.com: A different kind of Fermi problem
He's the Nobel Laureate who helped develop the world's first nuclear reactor. He, along with J. Robert Oppenheimer, is known as the father of the atomic bomb. He is also the former American Physical Society president we honor with our occasional Fermi Problem Friday posts. There's a national laboratory (Fermilab) and even an element on the periodic table (fermium) named after him. So what does a man with such credentials leave behind in a time capsule? Nothing too exciting, it turns out.
Enrico Fermi, the Italian-born physicist who helped develop quantum theory, nuclear physics, particle physics and statistical mechanics, along with University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins, sealed a time capsule behind a cornerstone of the University's Research Institutes building on June 21, 1949. Sixty-two years later, on June 2, former acquaintances of the prominent scientist and several physics big wigs gathered among a crowd of 200 to see the capsule opened.
Inside the copper box were found:
1. A 1948-49 University of Chicago directory
2. University of Chicago announcements from May 25, 1948
3. An architect’s sketch of the Research Institutes building where the capsule was placed
4. A booklet: “The New Frontier of Industry — Atomic Research”
5. A second booklet: “The Institute for Nuclear Studies, The Institute for the Study of Metals, The Institute of Radiobiology and Biophysics”
6. A road map
7. Airline schedules
8. Train timetables
9. A list of 1948-49 postdoctoral fellows from the Institute of Radiobiology and Biophysics
A 1927 buffalo nickel was also found in the same hole as the time capsule.
The most fascinating trinkets were the road map and train and plane brochures, which showed how the price of an airline ticket, for example, has risen over the last 62 years. These items, though, aren't any more noteworthy than the types of things your grandfather might have stuffed into a time capsule decades ago.
Though, perhaps, the contents of the box weren't Earth-shattering physics wonders or even secret musings from a scientist who helped shape the middle of the century, they are a gentle reminder that we're all human, even a man as remarkable as Enrico Fermi.
He's the Nobel Laureate who helped develop the world's first nuclear reactor. He, along with J. Robert Oppenheimer, is known as the father of the atomic bomb. He is also the former American Physical Society president we honor with our occasional Fermi Problem Friday posts. There's a national laboratory (Fermilab) and even an element on the periodic table (fermium) named after him. So what does a man with such credentials leave behind in a time capsule? Nothing too exciting, it turns out.
Enrico Fermi, the Italian-born physicist who helped develop quantum theory, nuclear physics, particle physics and statistical mechanics, along with University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins, sealed a time capsule behind a cornerstone of the University's Research Institutes building on June 21, 1949. Sixty-two years later, on June 2, former acquaintances of the prominent scientist and several physics big wigs gathered among a crowd of 200 to see the capsule opened.
Inside the copper box were found:
1. A 1948-49 University of Chicago directory
2. University of Chicago announcements from May 25, 1948
3. An architect’s sketch of the Research Institutes building where the capsule was placed
4. A booklet: “The New Frontier of Industry — Atomic Research”
5. A second booklet: “The Institute for Nuclear Studies, The Institute for the Study of Metals, The Institute of Radiobiology and Biophysics”
6. A road map
7. Airline schedules
8. Train timetables
9. A list of 1948-49 postdoctoral fellows from the Institute of Radiobiology and Biophysics
A 1927 buffalo nickel was also found in the same hole as the time capsule.
The most fascinating trinkets were the road map and train and plane brochures, which showed how the price of an airline ticket, for example, has risen over the last 62 years. These items, though, aren't any more noteworthy than the types of things your grandfather might have stuffed into a time capsule decades ago.
Though, perhaps, the contents of the box weren't Earth-shattering physics wonders or even secret musings from a scientist who helped shape the middle of the century, they are a gentle reminder that we're all human, even a man as remarkable as Enrico Fermi.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Canadian scientists 'bottle' antimatter
MontrealGazette: Canadian scientists 'bottle' antimatter
Makoto Fujiwara has spent more than a decade in laboratories hunting an elusive prey, the stuff of science fiction — the missing half of everything.
He and other Canadian researchers have finally managed to trap their lightning in a bottle. Only it isn't lightning they've got in the bottle — it's antimatter.
In a paper appearing online Sunday in the journal Nature Physics, lead author Fujiwara and his colleagues say they've succeeded in storing antimatter atoms for more than 16 minutes — virtually an eternity for a rare substance that scientists have struggled to keep intact for more than a few fractions of a second.
"It's a kind of game-changer," said Fujiwara, a researcher at the Vancouver-based TRIUMF, a laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, and an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary.
Finally trapping antimatter for a prolonged period of time opens the door for researchers to do the kind of testing they hope could one day solve what's been described as one of the biggest mysteries of science.
The dominant theory for the creation of the universe holds that, when the cosmos got started at the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have been produced in equal amounts.
But antimatter and matter annihilate each other on contact. If the early universe had equal amounts of matter and antimatter, they should have destroyed each other on contact, leaving nothing in the universe but light or other forms of energy.
Instead, the antimatter largely vanished, leaving scientists to puzzle over what happened to "the lost half" of the universe, as the researchers described it in a statement.
"It's related to our own existence," Fujiwara said. "There is, I think, a big desire to understand how it is that we came into existence, starting from the Big Bang."
Antimatter has long been a popular gimmick in fantastic fiction. It's the stuff that drives the faster-than-light engines of the starship Enterprise. Tom Hanks chased around a stolen canister of antimatter in the movie Angels and Demons.
But the opportunity to actually learn the properties of antimatter is an accomplishment researchers such as Fujiwara have been painstakingly trying to achieve for years.
"Nobody right now can explain why matter — everything that's around us, earth, sun, the galaxy — nobody knows how it is that we exist at all in the form of matter," Fujiwara said.
Anti-hydrogen atoms were first made in large quantities at a CERN laboratory eight years ago. CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
They couldn't be stored, however, because whenever the anti-atoms touched the walls of a bottle — matter, in other words — the two substances would destroy one another. Because the antimatter came in such a small quantity, it did no visible damage to the bottles by annihilating their equivalent masses in matter.
The ALPHA team Fujiwara works with is made of up 40 researchers, 14 of them Canadian. They come from the University of British Columbia, the University of Calgary, Simon Fraser University and York University in Toronto.
They worked at the same facility that contains the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator — the machine some feared would destroy the world by creating microscopic black holes. (It didn't). The accelerator is buried underground beneath the border between France and Switzerland.
The team created a cylindrical container or "magnetic bottle" that is about five by 25 centimetres. It uses magnets to keep the anti-hydrogen atoms from touching its walls, suspending the antimatter atoms away from any matter that would cause their destruction.
"It has to be suspended in vacuum . . . you need a nearly perfect vacuum," Fujiwara said.
Now that they've sustained their anti-hydrogen atoms for 1,000 seconds, scientists can began to examine them and see how they compare to ordinary hydrogen atoms.
The first step likely will be subjecting them to microwaves to determine if they absorb exactly the same frequencies (or energies) as their matter twins.
Scientists want to know whether, as predicted, the laws of physics are the same for both matter and antimatter.
Makoto Fujiwara has spent more than a decade in laboratories hunting an elusive prey, the stuff of science fiction — the missing half of everything.
He and other Canadian researchers have finally managed to trap their lightning in a bottle. Only it isn't lightning they've got in the bottle — it's antimatter.
In a paper appearing online Sunday in the journal Nature Physics, lead author Fujiwara and his colleagues say they've succeeded in storing antimatter atoms for more than 16 minutes — virtually an eternity for a rare substance that scientists have struggled to keep intact for more than a few fractions of a second.
"It's a kind of game-changer," said Fujiwara, a researcher at the Vancouver-based TRIUMF, a laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, and an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary.
Finally trapping antimatter for a prolonged period of time opens the door for researchers to do the kind of testing they hope could one day solve what's been described as one of the biggest mysteries of science.
The dominant theory for the creation of the universe holds that, when the cosmos got started at the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have been produced in equal amounts.
But antimatter and matter annihilate each other on contact. If the early universe had equal amounts of matter and antimatter, they should have destroyed each other on contact, leaving nothing in the universe but light or other forms of energy.
Instead, the antimatter largely vanished, leaving scientists to puzzle over what happened to "the lost half" of the universe, as the researchers described it in a statement.
"It's related to our own existence," Fujiwara said. "There is, I think, a big desire to understand how it is that we came into existence, starting from the Big Bang."
Antimatter has long been a popular gimmick in fantastic fiction. It's the stuff that drives the faster-than-light engines of the starship Enterprise. Tom Hanks chased around a stolen canister of antimatter in the movie Angels and Demons.
But the opportunity to actually learn the properties of antimatter is an accomplishment researchers such as Fujiwara have been painstakingly trying to achieve for years.
"Nobody right now can explain why matter — everything that's around us, earth, sun, the galaxy — nobody knows how it is that we exist at all in the form of matter," Fujiwara said.
Anti-hydrogen atoms were first made in large quantities at a CERN laboratory eight years ago. CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
They couldn't be stored, however, because whenever the anti-atoms touched the walls of a bottle — matter, in other words — the two substances would destroy one another. Because the antimatter came in such a small quantity, it did no visible damage to the bottles by annihilating their equivalent masses in matter.
The ALPHA team Fujiwara works with is made of up 40 researchers, 14 of them Canadian. They come from the University of British Columbia, the University of Calgary, Simon Fraser University and York University in Toronto.
They worked at the same facility that contains the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator — the machine some feared would destroy the world by creating microscopic black holes. (It didn't). The accelerator is buried underground beneath the border between France and Switzerland.
The team created a cylindrical container or "magnetic bottle" that is about five by 25 centimetres. It uses magnets to keep the anti-hydrogen atoms from touching its walls, suspending the antimatter atoms away from any matter that would cause their destruction.
"It has to be suspended in vacuum . . . you need a nearly perfect vacuum," Fujiwara said.
Now that they've sustained their anti-hydrogen atoms for 1,000 seconds, scientists can began to examine them and see how they compare to ordinary hydrogen atoms.
The first step likely will be subjecting them to microwaves to determine if they absorb exactly the same frequencies (or energies) as their matter twins.
Scientists want to know whether, as predicted, the laws of physics are the same for both matter and antimatter.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Nuclear physics center in Magurele moves closer to implementation
BusinessReviewRo: Nuclear physics center in Magurele moves closer to implementation
A total of 28 companies, including 11 Romanian ones, have so far expressed interest in the Extreme Light Infrastructure – Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) project, which will mark a premiere in physics: the intersection of a high-power laser beam and a brilliant high-energy gamma beam.
By Otilia Haraga
ELI-NP is one of the three pillars of ELI, or Extreme Light Infrastructure. It will be built near Bucharest, at the premises of the Horia Hulubei National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering (HHNIPNE). The other two pillars will be built in the Czech Republic (the ELI Beamlines Facility) and Hungary (the Attosecond facility).
Interested companies include Thales, Quantel, Cristal Laser, Continuum, Amplitude, IBM, Gerb, XIA, Anchor and DILO, according to Nicolae Victor Zamfir, GM of the HHNIPNE. The International Atomic Energy Agency and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency are also interested in some nuclear applications, he said.
In December 2010, the Romanian government made ELI-NP a priority project for Romania.
“This infrastructure we hope will not only stop the brain drain but will reverse it. I’m waiting for the moment when the German authorities complain that too many Germans are leaving for Romania,” joked Zamfir during a conference organized by KPMG on the subject.
Romania was chosen to host ELI-NP because of the know-how available here. “There is expertise in Magurele both in the domain of lasers and nuclear physics. After Germany, France and Great Britain, the best expertise in nuclear physics can be found in Romania. You cannot build something in a place where you don’t have expertise,” Zamfir told BR.
The project is expected to make Romania an important scientific hub for talent and know-how. It should also bring international visibility, and create 214 new high-qualified jobs in research and tech support.
The center will be based in Magurele, near Bucharest. “Why the Bucharest-Ilfov region? If a research infrastructure is built in the middle of nowhere, no scientists will want to go there. You also need infrastructure and a social life. A capital offers this kind of thing,” said Zamfir.
The project’s prospects look good, said the GM. “There is a chance that the Romanian government will not approve the project and also that our project is not good enough. However, the chances are close to nil because we have already sent the draft project for a preliminary evaluation in January-March. It was scrutinized and all the results were extraordinarily positive.” This was carried out by JASPERS (Joint Assistance to Support Projects in European Regions).
The total cost of the ELI-NP project in Romania will be EUR 280 million, excluding VAT. Of this sum, the state has to cover 17 percent from its budget. “The project in Romania is the most important of the three because it is the most complex and has the highest value,” said Zamfir.
The EUR 280 million will be divided as follows: buildings EUR 65 million, lasers EUR 80 million, gamma beam EUR 60 million, equipment EUR 30 million, contingences EUR 15 million and other expenses about EUR 30 million.
“We are limited by two factors: one is that structural funds at this stage should be spent by 2015. Also, what this project requires in terms of tools – the laser and the gamma beam – have to be conceived, you cannot buy them from anywhere. This means R&D. The time that physicists believe is necessary to develop these instruments is at least three and a half years,” said Zamfir.
However, there will also be operational costs to cover. “This infrastructure needs to be maintained. We estimated the necessary power at 5 MW, for instance. This costs a great deal. The feasibility study stipulates a green source of energy with 100 heat pumps around so that the energy is provided via heat exchange. This would be the first time in Europe when you can do this kind of thing at industrial level,” Zamfir told BR.
The high costs will be covered by national and European funds. “This started and will remain a European project and the European Commission needs to get involved in it. One third would be covered from the state budget, a third from Brussels and one third from private projects where companies would need to carry out certain experiments and pay for them,” he added.
A total of 28 companies, including 11 Romanian ones, have so far expressed interest in the Extreme Light Infrastructure – Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) project, which will mark a premiere in physics: the intersection of a high-power laser beam and a brilliant high-energy gamma beam.
By Otilia Haraga
ELI-NP is one of the three pillars of ELI, or Extreme Light Infrastructure. It will be built near Bucharest, at the premises of the Horia Hulubei National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering (HHNIPNE). The other two pillars will be built in the Czech Republic (the ELI Beamlines Facility) and Hungary (the Attosecond facility).
Interested companies include Thales, Quantel, Cristal Laser, Continuum, Amplitude, IBM, Gerb, XIA, Anchor and DILO, according to Nicolae Victor Zamfir, GM of the HHNIPNE. The International Atomic Energy Agency and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency are also interested in some nuclear applications, he said.
In December 2010, the Romanian government made ELI-NP a priority project for Romania.
“This infrastructure we hope will not only stop the brain drain but will reverse it. I’m waiting for the moment when the German authorities complain that too many Germans are leaving for Romania,” joked Zamfir during a conference organized by KPMG on the subject.
Romania was chosen to host ELI-NP because of the know-how available here. “There is expertise in Magurele both in the domain of lasers and nuclear physics. After Germany, France and Great Britain, the best expertise in nuclear physics can be found in Romania. You cannot build something in a place where you don’t have expertise,” Zamfir told BR.
The project is expected to make Romania an important scientific hub for talent and know-how. It should also bring international visibility, and create 214 new high-qualified jobs in research and tech support.
The center will be based in Magurele, near Bucharest. “Why the Bucharest-Ilfov region? If a research infrastructure is built in the middle of nowhere, no scientists will want to go there. You also need infrastructure and a social life. A capital offers this kind of thing,” said Zamfir.
The project’s prospects look good, said the GM. “There is a chance that the Romanian government will not approve the project and also that our project is not good enough. However, the chances are close to nil because we have already sent the draft project for a preliminary evaluation in January-March. It was scrutinized and all the results were extraordinarily positive.” This was carried out by JASPERS (Joint Assistance to Support Projects in European Regions).
The total cost of the ELI-NP project in Romania will be EUR 280 million, excluding VAT. Of this sum, the state has to cover 17 percent from its budget. “The project in Romania is the most important of the three because it is the most complex and has the highest value,” said Zamfir.
The EUR 280 million will be divided as follows: buildings EUR 65 million, lasers EUR 80 million, gamma beam EUR 60 million, equipment EUR 30 million, contingences EUR 15 million and other expenses about EUR 30 million.
“We are limited by two factors: one is that structural funds at this stage should be spent by 2015. Also, what this project requires in terms of tools – the laser and the gamma beam – have to be conceived, you cannot buy them from anywhere. This means R&D. The time that physicists believe is necessary to develop these instruments is at least three and a half years,” said Zamfir.
However, there will also be operational costs to cover. “This infrastructure needs to be maintained. We estimated the necessary power at 5 MW, for instance. This costs a great deal. The feasibility study stipulates a green source of energy with 100 heat pumps around so that the energy is provided via heat exchange. This would be the first time in Europe when you can do this kind of thing at industrial level,” Zamfir told BR.
The high costs will be covered by national and European funds. “This started and will remain a European project and the European Commission needs to get involved in it. One third would be covered from the state budget, a third from Brussels and one third from private projects where companies would need to carry out certain experiments and pay for them,” he added.
German scope for scientists
TheTelegraphCalcuttaIndia: German scope for scientists
Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics has inked a pact with Germany’s Deutsches Elektronen-Synchroton that will enable Indian scientists to access one of the world’s best “super microscopes”.
The German institute is home to a high-energy synchroton, a large source of radiation that can help reveal information invaluable in various fields of basic research.
There are about 50 synchrotrons in the world. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchroton is regarded as one of the best for investigating the structure of matter.
The agreement was signed by Milan K. Sanyal, the director of the city institute, and Helmut Dosch, the director of the German one, in the presence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chancellor Angela Merkel in New Delhi on May 31.
“The huge ring-shaped radiation source, PETRA III, at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchroton is the most powerful light source of its kind,” said Sanyal on Friday.
“Hair-thin, brilliant X-ray beams produced by PETRA III offer scientists outstanding opportunities to study minuscule material samples and precisely determine arrangements of atoms in them,” he added. In other words, it will help scientists study and manipulate matter in an ultra-small or nano scale.
India will contribute 14 million Euros for the project. But this will also give Indian scientists the opportunity to create their own synchroton. Sanyal has written to chief minister Mamata Banerjee with a proposal to build a synchroton near Salt Lake.
Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics has inked a pact with Germany’s Deutsches Elektronen-Synchroton that will enable Indian scientists to access one of the world’s best “super microscopes”.
The German institute is home to a high-energy synchroton, a large source of radiation that can help reveal information invaluable in various fields of basic research.
There are about 50 synchrotrons in the world. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchroton is regarded as one of the best for investigating the structure of matter.
The agreement was signed by Milan K. Sanyal, the director of the city institute, and Helmut Dosch, the director of the German one, in the presence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chancellor Angela Merkel in New Delhi on May 31.
“The huge ring-shaped radiation source, PETRA III, at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchroton is the most powerful light source of its kind,” said Sanyal on Friday.
“Hair-thin, brilliant X-ray beams produced by PETRA III offer scientists outstanding opportunities to study minuscule material samples and precisely determine arrangements of atoms in them,” he added. In other words, it will help scientists study and manipulate matter in an ultra-small or nano scale.
India will contribute 14 million Euros for the project. But this will also give Indian scientists the opportunity to create their own synchroton. Sanyal has written to chief minister Mamata Banerjee with a proposal to build a synchroton near Salt Lake.
Italian Nuclear Physicist Fulvio Frisone on Cold Fusion
Novinite.com: Italian Nuclear Physicist Fulvio Frisone on Cold Fusion
Italian uclear physicist Fulvio Frisone is disabled, suffering from spastic dystonic tetraparesis that forced him to a wheelchair.
He visited Sofia in April 2010, met Bulgarian physicists at the Institute of Nuclear Research of the Academy of Sciences and Bulgarian students.
I am interested in theoretical research which concerns the mechanism that tends to lower the barrier of Coulomb repulsion, as well as the metal matrix in the presence of defects, both local and extended.
In this summary, I wish to illustrate a topic concerning the controversial phenomenon known as cold fusion. I'm working out a complete theory of the process of interaction of deuterium gas in a lattice of palladium, in which the key point is the existence of micro-crack and micro-explosions, in the absence of radioactive nuclides, ie, clean energy as a result, within the deuterated lattices, considering particularly the quantum theory.
That said, I am waiting now for the start of the second phase of tests. The difficulty consists in creating the synergy between the theory and the proper experiment which could work at any place and time. Until now, theory and experiment do not go hand in hand, so there is no reproducibility, so Cold Fusion is not recognized yet as an official science.
In addition, the theoretical analysis on the process of cold fusion indicates high values of the probability of fusion between deuterons within a micro-crack at room temperature and with impure metals.
The first theoretical enigma I faced was the necessity of overcoming the Coulomb barrier between two deuterons (deuterium nuclei). The main point of my argumentation is: since these fusion reactions occurring within the palladium lattice, is it possible that the lattice vibrations could facilitate the approaching of two positive charges? The answer is yes, but it is better to specify.
First of all, as explained initially in one three-dimensional theory, published in 1998 in the scientific journal "Il Nuovo Cimento", there are many ways for the deuterium to get inside the metal lattice.
Also, according to the theory of Prof. G. Preparata, the first phase, known as α, is the most obvious, but there are three phases in which the deuterium gas can be absorbed by the palladium. The gas is absorbed in a disordered state, without a precise configuration. Then, with the gradual increase of the share of absorbed gas, it stabilizes its configuration in octahedral structures around the ion lattice.
In practice, most of these scientists charge the deuterium in the palladium and after the report of the load exceeds the factor 0.6 nearly, they observe a low background of protons, a clear sign that a nuclear reaction took place. However, this background is so scarce that some scientists assert it can be explained as due to the effect of cosmic rays.
According to the theoretical model, the product of the nuclear reaction d + d (deuterium + deuterium), within the lattice, is most likely helium 4 rather than the usual protons and neutrons. This model has been modified by me for a topic which has been treated during the last International Congress held in Yokohama (Japan) in 2007. The problem of reproducibility is the point that leads many fellow scientists to overlook this phenomenon.
However things are changing now, since MIT has taken the matter up. I suppose that in a short time, after observing this aspect of the non-linear phenomenology, the cold fusion or rather the phenomenon of LERN will become a universally recognized scientific achievement.
When this happens a new way of hope for theoretical physics opens. In fact, thanks to cold fusion, we could have unlimited energy, at low price and, most of all, environmentally friendly (in fact the only reaction's product is helium-4!). Obviously this resource, if properly used, could allow a quantum leap in this world so unfair and so declining.
Unfair, because the oil monopoly owned by some rich countries, creates continuous wars and social injustice to the limit of acceptance. In decline, because the entropy of the system environment is so increased that, unless there is an immediate remedy, we will witnessing a climatic upheaval worthy of the best apocalyptic verses of the Old Testament.
In conclusion, I would like to give a message of hope because I'm sure that, despite the dark times and the fears that this new millennium feeds, man's path is always directed towards the collective good. I mean to help to open the door to this new wave of progress, perhaps due of being able to control the phenomenon of cold fusion.
I'm also studying a cancer model for the same reason. I wanted to do a theoretical physical-medical study with three-dimensional character, based on the laws of Quantum Chromo-Dynamics and I would like to apply the non-abelian principles to a new technique, not traumatic and made only by colors, with the intent to show that using different frequencies of light, will be possible to operate, similarly to the traditional system, in a system of perturbations where the photons interact with the components of the skin, penetrating within the layers and going to hit the same point or area of the organ that has a more or less severe pathology.
Therefore I consider any given coordinate associating it to a yin or yang on which I run a stream of three different colors, different in both frequency and wavelength - Beam Light Therapy (BLT). The system emitting radiation modulates the frequency of using different color slides.
Italian uclear physicist Fulvio Frisone is disabled, suffering from spastic dystonic tetraparesis that forced him to a wheelchair.
He visited Sofia in April 2010, met Bulgarian physicists at the Institute of Nuclear Research of the Academy of Sciences and Bulgarian students.
I am interested in theoretical research which concerns the mechanism that tends to lower the barrier of Coulomb repulsion, as well as the metal matrix in the presence of defects, both local and extended.
In this summary, I wish to illustrate a topic concerning the controversial phenomenon known as cold fusion. I'm working out a complete theory of the process of interaction of deuterium gas in a lattice of palladium, in which the key point is the existence of micro-crack and micro-explosions, in the absence of radioactive nuclides, ie, clean energy as a result, within the deuterated lattices, considering particularly the quantum theory.
That said, I am waiting now for the start of the second phase of tests. The difficulty consists in creating the synergy between the theory and the proper experiment which could work at any place and time. Until now, theory and experiment do not go hand in hand, so there is no reproducibility, so Cold Fusion is not recognized yet as an official science.
In addition, the theoretical analysis on the process of cold fusion indicates high values of the probability of fusion between deuterons within a micro-crack at room temperature and with impure metals.
The first theoretical enigma I faced was the necessity of overcoming the Coulomb barrier between two deuterons (deuterium nuclei). The main point of my argumentation is: since these fusion reactions occurring within the palladium lattice, is it possible that the lattice vibrations could facilitate the approaching of two positive charges? The answer is yes, but it is better to specify.
First of all, as explained initially in one three-dimensional theory, published in 1998 in the scientific journal "Il Nuovo Cimento", there are many ways for the deuterium to get inside the metal lattice.
Also, according to the theory of Prof. G. Preparata, the first phase, known as α, is the most obvious, but there are three phases in which the deuterium gas can be absorbed by the palladium. The gas is absorbed in a disordered state, without a precise configuration. Then, with the gradual increase of the share of absorbed gas, it stabilizes its configuration in octahedral structures around the ion lattice.
In practice, most of these scientists charge the deuterium in the palladium and after the report of the load exceeds the factor 0.6 nearly, they observe a low background of protons, a clear sign that a nuclear reaction took place. However, this background is so scarce that some scientists assert it can be explained as due to the effect of cosmic rays.
According to the theoretical model, the product of the nuclear reaction d + d (deuterium + deuterium), within the lattice, is most likely helium 4 rather than the usual protons and neutrons. This model has been modified by me for a topic which has been treated during the last International Congress held in Yokohama (Japan) in 2007. The problem of reproducibility is the point that leads many fellow scientists to overlook this phenomenon.
However things are changing now, since MIT has taken the matter up. I suppose that in a short time, after observing this aspect of the non-linear phenomenology, the cold fusion or rather the phenomenon of LERN will become a universally recognized scientific achievement.
When this happens a new way of hope for theoretical physics opens. In fact, thanks to cold fusion, we could have unlimited energy, at low price and, most of all, environmentally friendly (in fact the only reaction's product is helium-4!). Obviously this resource, if properly used, could allow a quantum leap in this world so unfair and so declining.
Unfair, because the oil monopoly owned by some rich countries, creates continuous wars and social injustice to the limit of acceptance. In decline, because the entropy of the system environment is so increased that, unless there is an immediate remedy, we will witnessing a climatic upheaval worthy of the best apocalyptic verses of the Old Testament.
In conclusion, I would like to give a message of hope because I'm sure that, despite the dark times and the fears that this new millennium feeds, man's path is always directed towards the collective good. I mean to help to open the door to this new wave of progress, perhaps due of being able to control the phenomenon of cold fusion.
I'm also studying a cancer model for the same reason. I wanted to do a theoretical physical-medical study with three-dimensional character, based on the laws of Quantum Chromo-Dynamics and I would like to apply the non-abelian principles to a new technique, not traumatic and made only by colors, with the intent to show that using different frequencies of light, will be possible to operate, similarly to the traditional system, in a system of perturbations where the photons interact with the components of the skin, penetrating within the layers and going to hit the same point or area of the organ that has a more or less severe pathology.
Therefore I consider any given coordinate associating it to a yin or yang on which I run a stream of three different colors, different in both frequency and wavelength - Beam Light Therapy (BLT). The system emitting radiation modulates the frequency of using different color slides.
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