Physics labs face fiscal fireworks

From USA Today:  Physics labs face fiscal fireworks

Atom smashers drill down into the recesses of the innermost regions of reality. But fiscal reality is that they cost money, and some may be casualties of the federal budget fight.

The recipe for an atom smasher requires physicists, their machines, atoms and money. And money, it turns out, is the hardest part of the ingredient list to solve.
As Congress squabbles over millionaires' tax rates this weekend, a quieter collision is playing out in one part of the U.S. scientific enterprise, three U.S. labs that look at the humblest element of the universe, the atom.
On Jan. 7, a Department of Energy advisory panel headed by Texas A&M physicist Robert Tribble will weigh in on the future of three facilities that right now are the reason the USA leads the world in nuclear physics research. Nuclear physicists seek to understand how the innards of atoms, such as protons and neutrons, interact with each other. The field is essential to nuclear power and nuclear weapons, as well as our basic understanding of nature.
Science fans likely know these labs from discoveries that re-created matter unseen since the Big Bang, or that probed the proton, the positively charged physics particles packed into the center of atoms. One lab shocked physicists in 2009 with the discovery that these goobers aren't perfectly round.
"Just as we are poised to reap the bounty of a tremendous investment in nuclear physics in research and technology, we are looking at shuttering facilities, which seems tremendously wasteful, in addition to the loss of U.S. leadership in this vital area of science," says Steven Vigdor of Brookhaven National Laboratory, which hosts one of the threatened labs, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The others are the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) in Newport News, Va., and Michigan State University's planned Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, a $615 million lab, which has already received $153 million from the Energy Department and $31 million from the university.
Now, the Tribble committee faces "projected constrained budgets," with federal budget cutbacks ahead, as the Energy Department and National Science Foundation put it in an organizational letter, meaning it essentially could decide the fate of the labs. The labs' futures were first mapped out in 2007 before the economic crash, along with the rest of the U.S. nuclear physics effort. That effort is largely funded by the Energy Department to the tune of about $550 million a year. (To put that in perspective, that is about one-tenth of the cost of one of 12 nuclear-armed SSBN-X subs that the Defense Department now has on its shopping list, despite the Cold War ending two decades ago.)
You may be surprised to learn there are any big U.S. atom smashers left at all, with Europe's CERN lab and its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) getting all the attention this year for its detection of a Higgs boson (better known as the "God particle" to the dismay of physicists). Once upon a time, U.S. leadership in high-energy physics was assured, too, before it was overtaken by CERN, but in 1993, President Clinton killed the gigantic atom smasher in Texas that almost undoubtedly would have found the "God particle" about a decade ago, if it had been built (it was partly the victim of another fight over the budget deficit).
As the Tribble committee heard at a September fact-gathering meeting, the U.S. labs are building on the findings at CERN. For example, RHIC smashes together the centers of gold atoms at nearly the speed of light to create "quark-gluon" plasma, a super-heated fluid of the sub-atomic particles normally hidden inside atoms, which represents how things looked in the billionths of a second after the universe started. RHIC and the other lab will sweep up behind the LHC's higher-energy Higgs boson results, plumbing interesting areas of nuclear physics suggested by its findings as well as exploring many still-mysterious facets of atomic behavior.
The shortfall in funding facing all three labs, and the rest of U.S. nuclear physics, is about $100 million total in 2013. (The overall shortfall adds up to about $900 million over five years from 2014 to 2018.) So far, it looks like one of the three labs won't be funded, Vigdor says. If the fiscal cliff "sequestration" of federal funds goes through next year, the Energy Department faces a 7.7% cut in funds, and perhaps two labs will be shut down. "That will likely end U.S. leadership in this area, which we have enjoyed since World War II," Vigdor says. Other nations, such as China and India, are making plans to expand such research, even as the U.S. cuts back. "Our leadership is being drained to other countries," he says.
Of course, things are tough all over. A White House report in September said that sequestration would trigger $417 million in cuts at NASA, $2.5 billion for the National Institutes of Health and $7.5 billion in Defense Department research. "Please do not turn away from your commitment to the scientific research our country so vitally needs," read a Dec. 18 letter from 21 Nobel Prize-winners to President Obama, decrying the planned NIH cuts. The letter noted that every dollar invested in research tends to pay off many times over, a finding that economists have made for decades. Atom smashers, as one example, have played a role in the development of lasers, the World Wide Web and nuclear medicine, which uses radioactive isotopes as medical tracing devices in diagnoses and surgeries.
One irony of the cuts coming to science is that the 2007 build-up of nuclear physics came as a result of congressional concern over a National Academy of Sciences report, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm." The report trumpeted fears of the lost U.S. leadership in science and a resultant economic decline. So, the "Long-Range Plan" for U.S. nuclear science, just as in many other areas of research, made promises that look empty now with Washington's focus turned to cutting budgets.
"Everyone can understand the U.S. budget situation and the reality of the deficit," says Vigdor, who is retiring this week. "But all this is just a symptom of the poor budget planning of the U.S. government that has been going on for a long time." If lab bosses knew cuts were coming, Vigdor says, they could have planned things better, instead of facing the boom-and-bust spending that characterizes congressional decision-making.
The good news for the committee contemplating the future of U.S. atom smashers is that they are to submit two plans, one for flat funding (effectively a cut due to inflation) and one for slight growth in the budget for nuclear physics (effectively a flat line in funding for the same reason). By Jan. 7, when their report comes due, the fight over the fiscal cliff may have resolved enough to tell us which path the nation ends up following for the future of U.S. nuclear physics, and the rest of the scientific enterprise.
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Mercury News Interview: Shan Nair, nuclear physicist who now helps companies expand overseas

From MercuryNews.com:  Mercury News Interview: Shan Nair, nuclear physicist who now helps companies expand overseas After earning a doctorate in nuclear physics from Oxford, Shan Nair wrote 50 research papers on the subject and became so well regarded in his profession the European Commission picked him as one of the experts it sent to assess the damage from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in Ukraine.

But while working at a British energy agency where he supervised a group of accountants, he got the idea to co-found his own accounting company focused on international trade with his wife, Vyoma. Beginning small in 1994, Sunnyvale-based Nair & Co. now employees 640 people, boasts operations in more than 60 nations and generated $40 million in revenue in its most recent fiscal year -- a 25 percent increase from the year before.

In an interview edited for length and clarity, the 61-year-old Nair discussed the help he provides companies seeking to explore foreign markets and why he believes he can grow his business tenfold in coming years.

Q: What prompted you to move from Britain and set up Nair's headquarters here?

A: A lot of technology companies at the time were coming to the U.K. from the U.S. like babes in the woods with no guidance and support, which they needed. And Silicon Valley is a very open culture. Nobody here cares where you come form or how you speak English. If you have a proposition and you can show you can deliver on that, people are going to listen.

Q: What sort of issues do your clients face when they expand overseas?

A: When these companies set up abroad they are usually doing it with limited financial resources. So it's a question of balancing the risks and costs. For example, say you have a software engineer in Sweden that you want to put on the payroll. The Swedish authorities could argue over time that because some of the engineer's intellectual property has been developed there, Sweden should get some of the licensing revenue. Setting up a subsidiary will eliminate this risk, because all IP generated by the subsidiary will belong to the U.S. But it will cost about $20,000 to set up and another $15,000 to $16,000 a year to maintain it, which you might not want to do for one guy.

Q: How do you keep track of the laws in so many countries?

A: I've learned the hard way, by figuring it all out and then advising clients. So it's in my head, it's in my DNA now. Also, we have a 30-person department in India that basically populates a knowledge base on an intranet that's got all of this kind of material -- changes in tax regulations in Brazil, implications for clients, all of that written in there.

Q: Do you help any foreign Dr. Shan Nair, co-founder of Nair & Co., is shown in Sunnyvale on Dec. 10, 2012. Nair is an expert in international expansion, a highly sought after speaker on globalization and a contributing author for various publications. Since founding Nair & Co. in 1994, he has helped grow the company from a small U.K.-based professional services firm to a global enterprise with offices in the U.K., India, China, U.S., Japan and Singapore. (Dan Honda/Staff) companies that want to do business in the U.S.?

A: We have been traditionally U.S.-outbound focused. But we have a small and growing client base of foreign companies setting up operations in multiple countries, including the U.S. I would say last year, of all the new clients we got, 93 percent were U.S.-outbound.

Q: How do you see your company evolving?

A: I think the company is in a very exciting position, actually, and I don't think I've got rose-tinted spectacles. In any one country, there is a law firm, there's an accounting firm, there's a payroll company that can do what we do. But there are very few that are multicountry and there are very few that do it as a one-stop shop. In our case you can have a conversation about an issue in Japan, an issue in Denmark and an issue in Brazil in one call. We may make some very well-targeted acquisitions of companies offering synergistic services, but primarily I see us growing organically. I think it could easily get us to a size of about $350 million or $400 million, 10 times our current size.

Q: Have you seen a growing number of U.S. companies setting up foreign operations? A: Yes. Companies are going abroad at an earlier stage, I think partly for cost reasons to develop their technology in cheaper markets. Allied with that, because the U.S. market has been rather depressed, in order to achieve sales targets, they've got to sell in foreign markets. So the effect of the recession actually has been to increase our business. That's why our growth was 25 percent last year when most companies were having a hard time.

Q: What do you most like and dislike about your job?

A: I really like the positive development of the company from day one. And the variety. No two clients have the same problem. Also, the clients we have want to do everything right; they don't want to break any rules. What I don't like are dealing with HR problems, I don't have a lot of time for moaners and whiners. And my reaction usually is to fire them.

Shan Nair Position: Co-founder and former CEO of Nair & Co.
Age: 61
Birthplace: Cairo, Egypt
Residence: Santa Clara and Naples, Fla
Education: Doctorate in nuclear physics from Oxford
Previous jobs: Personal assistant to a board member with the United Kingdom company National Power; commercial head of nuclear decommissioning with National Power; research scientist with the Central Electricity Generating Board in the U.K. Family: He and his wife, Vyoma, have a daughter, Aditi.

Five facts about Shan Nair
1. The child of a diplomat, he has lived in 13 countries and for a time fancied a career in the army. 2. He likes driving fast cars on race tracks and recalls once "hitting a wall of tires at 130 miles an hour," noting, "there were tires going everywhere."
3. A key life-changing experience was making the leap from salaried nuclear physicist to high-risk entrepreneur.
4. He and his wife set up a free lunch program for more than 1,000 poor children in India.
5. He and his wife have helped rescue abused bears and elephants in India.

New posting schedule

Now that I've got this new full-time job, I'll be posting in this blog twice a week - on Monday's and Wednesdays.

So the next post for this blog will be on Monday.

Thanks for your patience.

Posts resume this Wednesday

I'm a freelance writer and I am way behind on a job I have to do, so I won't be posting here until Wednesday..

Thanks for your patience!

Angry Birds to star in particle physics board game

From SciTech Gaming:  Angry Birds to star in particle physics board game

After teaching gamers that physics can be fun, the Angry Birds may soon be doing the same thing for —yowza!— quantum physics.

 

Rovio Entertainment and CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, are developing “fun learning experiences” to engage children with science, TechCrunch reported.

 

“Modern physics has been around for 100 years, but it’s still a mystery to many people. Working together with Rovio, we can teach kids quantum physics by making it fun and easy to understand,” TechCrunch quoted CERN’s Head of Education, Rolf Landua, as saying.

 

Landua spoke about the collaboration at the Frankfurt Book Fair where the Rovio launch took place.

 

He added this is "a great fit for both sides, combining physics and Angry Birds in a fun way."

Fun from CERN
 

"Rovio has a great platform, with a broad reach and highly engaged fans, which makes this collaboration very promising. With Rovio and Angry Birds Playground, we get a great channel to communicate what CERN does,” he added.

 

Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio Mighty Eagle and CMO, added that with Playground products, "kids can have fun and learn more about physics than they would’ve in the ‘old-fashioned’ style of learning.”

 

TechCrunch quoted Rovio as saying the collaboration will involve co-producing learning support materials with CERN, initially including books and a board game.

 

"More products will be added later, the company said," TechCrunch said.

 

New initiative

 

TechCrunch said this is part of Rovio's new initiative to use the power of Angry Birds as a brand to be a learning aid.

 

Rovio already started a learning program called "Angry Birds Playground" for children aged 3 to 8, based on the Finnish National Curriculum for kindergarten. — TJD, GMA News

 

Viewpoint: Heavy into Stability

From Physics.com:  Viewpoint: Heavy into Stability

In 1940, the first synthetic element heavier than uranium—neptunium-239—was produced by bombarding uranium with neutrons. Since then, nuclear scientists have ventured into the search for new heavy elements, expanding the frontiers of the physical world. The creation of elements with atomic number beyond that of uranium is challenging, as the half-life of elements decreases with increasing atomic number. However, nuclear theories have predicted that a so-called “island of stability” exists for certain superheavy elements of the nuclide chart, which should have half-lives ranging from minutes to many years.
The search for this island of stability has led to the creation of elements with up to 118 protons. The last element to be discovered was 117 [1] (see 9 April, 2010 Viewpoint), filling in the final gap on the list of observed elements up to element 118. Now, writing in Physical Review Letters, Yuri Oganessian at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), Russia, and colleagues report on a second production campaign for element 117 [2], which verifies their initial findings and provides a new comprehensive characterization of the decay chains of two isotopes of the 117 element. Their results confirm that we are indeed approaching the shores of the island of stability.
The stability of nuclides is a function of proton ($Z$) and neutron ($N$) number, as illustrated in Fig. 1. A connected region (“continent”) of stable elements is found for lighter elements, ending at the lead–bismuth “cape.” All elements with an atomic number exceeding 82 (lead) are unstable, with decreasing half-life for higher atomic numbers. However, a first region of relative stability appears around the isotopes of thorium and uranium ($Z$ equal to 90 and 92, respectively) whose lifetimes are comparable with the age of the universe. Elements with atomic number greater than that of uranium (transuranium elements) have only been produced in laboratory experiments (see the historical review in Ref. [3]). The progress in this field is impressive: 26 new, manmade heavy elements have been synthesized within 60 years. Some of these elements (up to californium) can be produced in macroscopic quantities in nuclear reactors, using neutron capture processes to form heavier elements from actinides.
Elements beyond uranium should become more and more unstable as they get heavier, as Coulomb repulsion starts to be stronger than the strong force that holds the nucleus together. But in the late sixties, Glenn T. Seaborg postulated the existence of a relatively stable region of superheavy elements, an island of stability. This idea is based on the nuclear shell model, which describes the atomic nucleus as made of shells, similar to the well-known electronic shell model for atoms. Nuclear theorists, including myself [4, 5], predicted that the stability of nuclei with so-called closed proton and neutron shells should counteract the repelling Coulomb forces. In isotopes with so-called “magic” proton and neutron numbers, neutrons and protons completely fill the energy levels of a given shell in the nucleus. Those particular isotopes will have a longer lifetime than nearby ones. According to theory, this second island of stability should be located around proton number $114$ or $120$ and neutron number $184$. Reaching this island of stability would open new horizons in nuclear physics and technology, enabling the production of superheavy nuclides in macroscopic quantities and with sufficiently long half-life to carry out actual experiments. This would allow us to test our understanding of nuclear matter and to possibly exploit such long-lived elements for applications in medicine or chemistry.
Substantial progress in the synthesis of superheavy nuclei was achieved at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Germany, where the elements with $Z=108$ to $112$ have been synthesized for the first time in fusion reactions of heavy projectiles (from iron to zinc) with lead and bismuth targets [6]. Unfortunately, in these projectile–target combinations only the proton-rich isotopes of superheavy elements with very short half-lives can be produced, as they lie outside the island of nuclear stability. Within the last ten years, researchers at JINR have successfully synthesized six new heavy elements with $Z=113$–$118$ by following a different approach: instead of a heavy projectile, a high-intensity beam of lighter atoms (calcium-48) is aimed at heavy actinide targets made of uranium or transuranium elements. The use of neutron richer calcium-48 allows the synthesis of nuclides with neutron number closer to that needed for stability.
Up until 2010, there was a gap between elements 116 and 118. The obstacle towards the production of element 117 was that the appropriate target material, berkelium-249 (${}^{249}\text{Bk}$) with 97 protons, has a short half-life of only 330 days. In 2009, several milligrams of ${}^{249}\text{Bk}$ were produced at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US—enough to prepare a target and to perform the first experiment for the synthesis of element 117 at JINR [1]. In early March of 2012, a new portion of ${}^{249}\text{Bk}$, $12\text{mg}$, was shipped again from Oak Ridge to JINR, where physicists started the second production campaign for the synthesis of element 117.
The results of this campaign, reported in the paper by Oganessian et al. [2], confirm that a reliable method for the production of 117 exists. The authors can now state with confidence that two isotopes of this element, ${}^{293}117$ and ${}^{294}117$, have been synthesized and provide a comprehensive characterization of their decay properties. Two decay chains of ${}^{294}117$ and five decay chains of ${}^{293}117$ were detected. Oganessian et al. also observe a concomitant decay chain of element 118. This occurs because, at the time of the experiment, part of the ${}^{249}\text{Bk}$ target material had already decayed into californium-249, which can generate element 118 in a fusion reaction with calcium-48. The measured lifetimes of the 117 isotopes and other elements along its decay chain are long, lying in the millisecond-to-second range. This is consistent with shell-model predictions, confirming that these elements are indeed located at the southwest shores of the island of stability. The consistent results emerging from the two productions campaigns at JINR may get the authors close to laying claim on naming the new element.
What are the prospects of reaching deeper into the center of the island of stability? Although fairly long lived, the isotopes of superheavy elements produced in the experiments with calcium-48 are still neutron deficient: each isotope needs six to eight more neutrons to lie within the island. This occurs because heavier stable atoms must have a larger neutron/proton ratio that lighter atoms. Thus creating a heavy atom by fusion of two lighter ones inevitably leads to an atom that has too few neutrons and too many protons to be stable. One would then deduce that there is no way to the island of stability. However, pathways towards the center of the island of stability may exist. Recent theoretical studies carried out in my research group suggest that superheavy nuclei located at the top left side of the island of stability, formed in ordinary fusion reactions, could get rid of excess protons via ${\beta }^{+}$ decay [7]. Other alternatives to get to the right neutron number might exploit neutron capture, rather than fusion: such techniques would require the exposure of heavy elements, such as uranium, to very high neutron fluxes. Theory shows that this could be achieved in hypothetical small-scale underground nuclear explosions [8] or by using pulsed nuclear reactors of the next generation, if their neutron fluence per pulse is increased by about three orders of magnitude.
While the island of stability is now more firmly in sight, the jury is still out on what navigation plan will turn out to be successful.

References

1. Yu.Ts. Oganessian et al., “Synthesis of a New Element with Atomic Number Z=117,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 142502 (2010).
2. Y. T. Oganessian et al., “Production and Decay of the Heaviest Nuclei 293,294 117 and 294 118,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 162501 (2012).
3. G. T. Seaborg and W. D. Loveland, The Elements Beyond Uranium (John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1990)[Amazon][WorldCat].
4. S. G. Nilsson, S. G. Thompson, and C. F. Tsang, “Stability of Superheavy Nuclei and Their Possible Occurrence in Nature,” Phys. Lett. 28B, 458 (1969).
5. U. Mosel and W. Greiner, “On the Stability of Superheavy Nuclei Against Fission,” Z. Phys. A 222, 261 (1969); Also in the Proposal for the Establishment of GSI: Frankfurt-Darmstadt-Marburg (1967).
6. S. Hofmann and G. Munzenberg, “The Discovery of the Heaviest Elements,” Rev. Mod. Phys. 72, 733 (2000).
7. V. I. Zagrebaev, A. V. Karpov, and W. Greiner, “Possibilities for Synthesis of New Isotopes of Superheavy Elements in Fusion Reactions,” Phys. Rev. C 85, 014608 (2012).
8. V. I. Zagrebaev, A. V. Karpov, I. N. Mishustin, and W. Greiner, “Production of Heavy and Superheavy Neutron-Rich Nuclei in Neutron Capture Processes,” Phys. Rev. C 84, 044617 (2011).

 

Viewpoint: Heavy into Stability

From Physics: Viewpoint: Heavy into Stability

In 1940, the first synthetic element heavier than uranium—neptunium-239—was produced by bombarding uranium with neutrons. Since then, nuclear scientists have ventured into the search for new heavy elements, expanding the frontiers of the physical world. The creation of elements with atomic number beyond that of uranium is challenging, as the half-life of elements decreases with increasing atomic number. However, nuclear theories have predicted that a so-called “island of stability” exists for certain superheavy elements of the nuclide chart, which should have half-lives ranging from minutes to many years.
The search for this island of stability has led to the creation of elements with up to 118 protons. The last element to be discovered was 117 [1] (see 9 April, 2010 Viewpoint), filling in the final gap on the list of observed elements up to element 118. Now, writing in Physical Review Letters, Yuri Oganessian at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), Russia, and colleagues report on a second production campaign for element 117 [2], which verifies their initial findings and provides a new comprehensive characterization of the decay chains of two isotopes of the 117 element. Their results confirm that we are indeed approaching the shores of the island of stability.
The stability of nuclides is a function of proton (Z) and neutron (N) number, as illustrated in Fig. 1. A connected region (“continent”) of stable elements is found for lighter elements, ending at the lead–bismuth “cape.” All elements with an atomic number exceeding 82 (lead) are unstable, with decreasing half-life for higher atomic numbers. However, a first region of relative stability appears around the isotopes of thorium and uranium (Z equal to 90 and 92, respectively) whose lifetimes are comparable with the age of the universe. Elements with atomic number greater than that of uranium (transuranium elements) have only been produced in laboratory experiments (see the historical review in Ref. [3]). The progress in this field is impressive: 26 new, manmade heavy elements have been synthesized within 60 years. Some of these elements (up to californium) can be produced in macroscopic quantities in nuclear reactors, using neutron capture processes to form heavier elements from actinides.
Elements beyond uranium should become more and more unstable as they get heavier, as Coulomb repulsion starts to be stronger than the strong force that holds the nucleus together. But in the late sixties, Glenn T. Seaborg postulated the existence of a relatively stable region of superheavy elements, an island of stability. This idea is based on the nuclear shell model, which describes the atomic nucleus as made of shells, similar to the well-known electronic shell model for atoms. Nuclear theorists, including myself [4, 5], predicted that the stability of nuclei with so-called closed proton and neutron shells should counteract the repelling Coulomb forces. In isotopes with so-called “magic” proton and neutron numbers, neutrons and protons completely fill the energy levels of a given shell in the nucleus. Those particular isotopes will have a longer lifetime than nearby ones. According to theory, this second island of stability should be located around proton number 114 or 120 and neutron number 184. Reaching this island of stability would open new horizons in nuclear physics and technology, enabling the production of superheavy nuclides in macroscopic quantities and with sufficiently long half-life to carry out actual experiments. This would allow us to test our understanding of nuclear matter and to possibly exploit such long-lived elements for applications in medicine or chemistry.
Substantial progress in the synthesis of superheavy nuclei was achieved at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Germany, where the elements with Z=108 to 112 have been synthesized for the first time in fusion reactions of heavy projectiles (from iron to zinc) with lead and bismuth targets [6]. Unfortunately, in these projectile–target combinations only the proton-rich isotopes of superheavy elements with very short half-lives can be produced, as they lie outside the island of nuclear stability. Within the last ten years, researchers at JINR have successfully synthesized six new heavy elements with Z=113–118 by following a different approach: instead of a heavy projectile, a high-intensity beam of lighter atoms (calcium-48) is aimed at heavy actinide targets made of uranium or transuranium elements. The use of neutron richer calcium-48 allows the synthesis of nuclides with neutron number closer to that needed for stability.
Up until 2010, there was a gap between elements 116 and 118. The obstacle towards the production of element 117 was that the appropriate target material, berkelium-249 (249Bk) with 97 protons, has a short half-life of only 330 days. In 2009, several milligrams of 249Bk were produced at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US—enough to prepare a target and to perform the first experiment for the synthesis of element 117 at JINR [1]. In early March of 2012, a new portion of 249Bk, 12mg, was shipped again from Oak Ridge to JINR, where physicists started the second production campaign for the synthesis of element 117.
The results of this campaign, reported in the paper by Oganessian et al. [2], confirm that a reliable method for the production of 117 exists. The authors can now state with confidence that two isotopes of this element, 293117 and 294117, have been synthesized and provide a comprehensive characterization of their decay properties. Two decay chains of 294117 and five decay chains of 293117 were detected. Oganessian et al. also observe a concomitant decay chain of element 118. This occurs because, at the time of the experiment, part of the 249Bk target material had already decayed into californium-249, which can generate element 118 in a fusion reaction with calcium-48. The measured lifetimes of the 117 isotopes and other elements along its decay chain are long, lying in the millisecond-to-second range. This is consistent with shell-model predictions, confirming that these elements are indeed located at the southwest shores of the island of stability. The consistent results emerging from the two productions campaigns at JINR may get the authors close to laying claim on naming the new element.
What are the prospects of reaching deeper into the center of the island of stability? Although fairly long lived, the isotopes of superheavy elements produced in the experiments with calcium-48 are still neutron deficient: each isotope needs six to eight more neutrons to lie within the island. This occurs because heavier stable atoms must have a larger neutron/proton ratio that lighter atoms. Thus creating a heavy atom by fusion of two lighter ones inevitably leads to an atom that has too few neutrons and too many protons to be stable. One would then deduce that there is no way to the island of stability. However, pathways towards the center of the island of stability may exist. Recent theoretical studies carried out in my research group suggest that superheavy nuclei located at the top left side of the island of stability, formed in ordinary fusion reactions, could get rid of excess protons via β+ decay [7]. Other alternatives to get to the right neutron number might exploit neutron capture, rather than fusion: such techniques would require the exposure of heavy elements, such as uranium, to very high neutron fluxes. Theory shows that this could be achieved in hypothetical small-scale underground nuclear explosions [8] or by using pulsed nuclear reactors of the next generation, if their neutron fluence per pulse is increased by about three orders of magnitude.
While the island of stability is now more firmly in sight, the jury is still out on what navigation plan will turn out to be successful.

References

1. Yu.Ts. Oganessian et al., “Synthesis of a New Element with Atomic Number Z=117,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 142502 (2010).
2. Y. T. Oganessian et al., “Production and Decay of the Heaviest Nuclei 293,294 117 and 294 118,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 162501 (2012).
3. G. T. Seaborg and W. D. Loveland, The Elements Beyond Uranium (John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1990)[Amazon][WorldCat].
4. S. G. Nilsson, S. G. Thompson, and C. F. Tsang, “Stability of Superheavy Nuclei and Their Possible Occurrence in Nature,” Phys. Lett. 28B, 458 (1969).
5. U. Mosel and W. Greiner, “On the Stability of Superheavy Nuclei Against Fission,” Z. Phys. A 222, 261 (1969); Also in the Proposal for the Establishment of GSI: Frankfurt-Darmstadt-Marburg (1967).
6. S. Hofmann and G. Munzenberg, “The Discovery of the Heaviest Elements,” Rev. Mod. Phys. 72, 733 (2000).
7. V. I. Zagrebaev, A. V. Karpov, and W. Greiner, “Possibilities for Synthesis of New Isotopes of Superheavy Elements in Fusion Reactions,” Phys. Rev. C 85, 014608 (2012).
8. V. I. Zagrebaev, A. V. Karpov, I. N. Mishustin, and W. Greiner, “Production of Heavy and Superheavy Neutron-Rich Nuclei in Neutron Capture Processes,” Phys. Rev. C 84, 044617 (2011).

 

Chinese, Russian nuclear physicists meet in Stellenbosch

From Stellenbosch University:  Chinese, Russian nuclear physicists meet in Stellenbosch

Stellenbosch University’s Department of Physics is having quite a busy end of the year, thanks to visits by two groups of international nuclear physicists. Last week, Russian physicists met with their South African counterparts, while a symposium along with Chinese researchers is taking  place this week.
The 2nd China-South Africa Joint Symposium on Nuclear Physics started on Monday (3 December) and will run until Thursday. It is being held on the Stellenbosch University campus in collaboration with academics of Peking University in China.
The 3rd South African-JINR Symposium, in conjunction with the Russian Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) was held from 27 to 30 November at Blaauwklippen outside Stellenbosch.
Both events were organised by the Nuclear Physics Research Group in the SU Department of Physics.Researchers and students from other South African institutions and research entities were also involved.
For more information, contact Prof Shaun Wyngaardt at shaunmw@sun.ac.za.

 

Cosmic Rays Help Diagnose Damaged Nuclear Reactors From Space

From Red Orbity:  Cosmic Rays Help Diagnose Damaged Nuclear Reactors From Space

Image Caption: Los Alamos National Laboratory Muon Radiography team members stand in front of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi reactor complex during a visit to determine evaluate whether Los Alamos' Scattering Method for cosmic-ray radiography could be used to image the location of nuclear materials within the reactor buildings. Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
They may not be using alien technology, but physicists from Los Alamos National Laboratory are looking to outer space for help in diagnosing a damaged nuclear reactors like the one that caused massive evacuations around the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March 2011.
According to their report in the journal Physical Letters, the research team from Los Alamos National Laboratory has found a way to use cosmic ray radiation to accurately create a detailed image of the inside of a damaged reactor core. This technology could be used to implement more effective cleanup operations, since knowing where radioactive materials are located is key to implementing effective strategies.
In their experiment, the team of scientists compared two methods for detecting hazardous material: a traditional transmission method and the Los Alamos’ scattering method for cosmic-ray radiography. According to the researchers’ report, the latter method proved to be superior.
“Within weeks of the disastrous 2011 tsunami, Los Alamos’ Muon Radiography Team began investigating use of Los Alamos’ muon scattering method to determine whether it could be used to image the location of nuclear materials within the damaged reactors,” explained the study’s lead author Konstantin Borozdin of Los Alamos’ Subatomic Physics Group.
“As people may recall from previous nuclear reactor accidents, being able to effectively locate damaged portions of a reactor core is a key to effective, efficient cleanup,” he said. “Our paper shows that Los Alamos’ scattering method is a superior method for gaining high-quality images of core materials.”
Cosmic-ray, or muon, radiography uses the particles that are generated when radiation from outer space collides with the Earth’s atmosphere. These cosmic rays, known as muons, can be used to create images in the same way as X-rays, expect that muons are produced naturally and constantly come in contact with the human body without any known harmful effects.
Muons are particularly useful in working with radioactive material because “high-Z” materials, like uranium, scatter them differently than the surrounding containment materials – allowing scientists to pinpoint the locations of radioactive material if they know how the muons are being diffused.
Using a computer model, the team was able to simulate a damaged reactor with radioactive material scattered throughout the virtual power plant. They were then able to compare the accuracy of both the traditional scanning methods and the Los Alamos scattering method in finding what material was indeed missing from the model reactor and where it was located over a six-week period.
The Los Alamos method demonstrated that it was able to accurately provide the detailed information that the scientists were looking for.
“We now have a concept by which the Japanese can gather crucial data about what is going on inside their damaged reactor cores with minimal human exposure to the high radiation fields that exist in proximity to the reactor buildings,” Borozdin explained.
“Muon images could be valuable in more effectively planning and executing faster remediation of the reactor complex.”
The researchers noted that this detection technology could also be applied to security measures in the post-9/11 era. They said muon radiation detectors would be non-invasive, yet able to spot heavily shielded contraband in minutes without the need to open a potentially dangerous vehicle or container.

 

High Honor for Two Physicists

From UCR Today:  High Honor for Two Physicists

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Two physicists at the University of California, Riverside — Richard Seto and Jing Shi — have been elected as fellows of the American Physical Society (APS).  Only 250 researchers received the high honor this year.
The APS represents more than 50,000 members, including physicists in academia, national laboratories and industry in the United States and throughout the world.  Fellowship in the society is limited to no more than one half of one percent of the membership.  The evaluation process for fellowship election is done entirely by one’s professional peers.
Seto, a professor of physics and astronomy, was elected an APS Fellow “for creative experimentation and leadership in the study of hadronic matter under extreme conditions including measurements and analysis leading to the discovery of the strongly-interacting Quark Gluon Plasma (sQGP).”
Seto works in the field of relativistic heavy ion physics — a blend between nuclear physics and particle physics — that focuses on the properties of bulk systems governed by the theory of strong interactions or Quantum Chromodynamics.  His research is carried out on the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, where very high energy collisions of heavy nuclei are available. This has led to the discovery of the strongly-interacting Quark Gluon Plasma, a state of matter in which the protons and neutrons in a nucleus are melted into their constituent quarks and gluons.
The author or coauthor of more than 170 papers in scholarly journals, Seto has served on the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, which advises the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation on research priorities in nuclear science; the program committee for the Division of Nuclear Physics of American Physical Society; the editorial board for Physics Review C; and as PHENIX deputy spokesperson.  Currently, he serves on the PHENIX Executive Committee, which advises the management of the experiment.  Seto received his doctoral degree from Columbia University in 1983.
Shi, also a professor of physics and astronomy, was elected an APS Fellow “for his pioneering work in spin transport in organic semiconductors and organic molecules.”
At UCR, his research endeavors include experimental condensed matter physics. Currently, he is working on the charge and spin transport in carbon-based and other novel electronic materials.
He has published nearly 90 papers in scholarly journals including two in Nature, one in Science, and six in Physical Review Letters.  He holds 11 US patents and provisional patents.   His many awards and honors include the highly competitive Research Innovation Award in 2000 from the Research Corporation as well as the IBM Faculty Award in 2009.  He received his doctoral degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1994.
The APS works to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics through its outstanding research journals, scientific meetings and education, outreach, advocacy and international activities.

 

CFI Visits TRIUMF

From triUMF:  CFI Visits TRIUMF

The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) has become a mainstay of support for Canadian research excellence since its launch more than a decade ago.  With a new mandate that includes the stewardship of four large-science facilities across the country as well as a new strategic plan, the arms-length funding agency visited TRIUMF this Wednesday to (a) get a personal look at a number of CFI-supported projects that are based at TRIUMF and (b) to get familiar with how a national laboratory like TRIUMF manages it affairs with a good track record of relevance and performance.
Guy Levesque, director of programs at CFI, spent more than two hours at TRIUMF after lunch on November 28. Literally between planes on business in British Columbia, he made time for a visit.  The intinerary began with a meeting with TRIUMF's executive team and some of the principal investigators for active CFI projects in which TRIUMF is involved.  Reiner Kruecken presented a short overview of TRIUMF and summarized thge CFI-supported activities at the lab over the last five years.  These included, among others, the ARIEL and e-linac accelerator project led by Dean Karlen at UVic, the M-20 beamlines led by Paul Percival at SFU, the ATLAS Tier-1 Data Centre led by Mike Vetterli at SFU, the IRIS nuclear-physics experiment led by Ritu Kanungo at Saint Mary's, and the Ultra-Cold Neutrons project led by Jeff Martin at Winnipeg.  TRIUMF is not eligible to apply directly for CFI funds, but it is involved in many projects because of its unique technical and engineering skills and capabilities.  The lab also hosts some facilities and detectors led by university collaborators that exploit TRIUMF's accelerators and beams.  A rough estimate indicates that CFI funding of nealry $30M over the past five years has influenced more than $100M of activity that engages and enhances TRIUMF's role in leveraging Canadian university research. Reiner's conclusion was that Canadian leadership in subatomic physics is enabled by CFI's support and that TRIUMF provides substantial leveraging of that investment for national and international impact.  Through its core operations, TRIUMF can also serve as an ideal long-term steward for some of these on-site facilities and infrastructure.
Mr. Levesque then toured TRIUMF and met several of the key project personnel.  Around ARIEL, he saw the newly renovated Electron Hall and met project managers Gary Ridout and Franco Mammarella in addition to project leaders Lia Merminga and Remy Dawson.  In a rare moment of access, the group also visited the ARIEL civil-construction site and toured the beam tunnel and stepped inside the concrete target hall and RIB building. After shedding the extra safety gear, the group visited the Meson Hall and met Syd Kreitzman and Gerald Morris to learn more about the M-20 muon beamline and its first week of science.  Paul Schaffer led Mr. Levesque on a lightning tour of the nuclear-medicine facilities and discussed TRIUMF's relationship with commercial isotope-producer Nordion and discussed TRIUMF's long-standing research collaboration with the Pacific Parkinson's Research Centre at UBC and its expansion into more generalized neurology and brain imaging.  With a stop in ISAC-II to see IRIS, DESCANT, and a several other nuclear-physics detectors, the group then visited the ATLAS Tier-1 Data Centre and met with Operations Manager Reda Tafirout and ATLAS scientist Isabel Trigger.  The tour finished with a visit to the VECC test area where the first stage of the e-linac is being prototyped and developed.  Bob Laxdal, several students, and Ken Fong showed the RF systems and electron beamline and discussed the relationships with local industry and India's VECC laboratory.
Wrapping up the tour amidst pelting rain, Mr. Levesque thanked TRIUMF and the university hosts for the discussions.  On behalf of TRIUMF, Reiner expressed his appreciation for CFI's attention to Canadian excellence in research and innovation as well as the role that facilities like TRIUMF play in the larger enteprise.

 

Texas A&M, LSU Nuclear Physicists Looking to Stars to Understand Energy

From Texas A&M Science: Texas A&M, LSU Nuclear Physicists Looking to Stars to Understand Energy

COLLEGE STATION -- As their football squads prepare to meet for the first time in Southeastern Conference history Saturday (Oct. 20) at Kyle Field, Texas A&M University and Louisiana State University are teaming up to study collisions of another variety -- the nuclear kind -- on one of the world's biggest stages for nuclear astrophysics, Japan's RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science. While Johnny "Football" Manziel undoubtedly will have many Saturday moments in the sun, Texas A&M and LSU physicists are looking to that same sun and its fellow stars as both the architects and inhabitants of our universe in an effort to better understand nuclear reactions and the resulting energy that makes life on Earth possible. "When you have a nuclear reaction, you have a tremendous amount of energy released," said Robert E. Tribble, distinguished professor of physics at Texas A&M and director of the Cyclotron Institute. "Solar energy is a product of a nuclear reaction. We're trying to find out exactly how the elements were formed and, in the process, how the energy that makes life on Earth possible was created." Tribble and LSU physics professor Jeffrey C. Blackmon are co-principal investigators in a United States Department of Energy-funded international collaboration that is exploring the outer limits of nuclear reactions along with colleagues at two additional U.S. universities (Texas A&M University-Commerce and Washington University in St. Louis) and in five other countries (IFIN-HH Bucharest, Romania; Universite de Caen, France; INFN, Sezione di Pisa, Italy; Oxford University, United Kingdom; Kyushu University, Japan). Tribble notes that a critical early part of the study is a series of experiments using rare isotope beams (RIBs) at the newly commissioned Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory (RIBF) at RIKEN, widely recognized as the most powerful radioactive beam facility in the world. Tribble says researchers there are doing cutting-edge experiments with nuclei that only live fractions of a second -- rare, infinitesimal windows in which to gain valuable insight into energy‘s essence and answers. "These experiments will provide important information about rates of nuclear reactions that occur in stellar explosions," Tribble added. "Some of the reactions that happen in stars happen in nuclei at the edge of stability within the shortest possible time span during which we can access them. Stars are just big balls of particles that are undergoing nuclear reactions. The reactions in our sun, which is a relatively small star, provide heat and light to us on Earth. It's important to understand these reactions in order to understand the very basis of life as we know it." The collaboration will focus on both proton- and neutron-breakup reactions at intermediate energies, with the goal of using the resulting data to better understand single-particle properties and to determine reaction rates in larger stellar explosions, such as supernovaes and X-ray bursts. By understanding how nuclear reactions work at a base level from both single-nucleon removal and recapture standpoints, Tribble says they can extend that knowledge to predict likely patterns of atomic behavior in more complex situations and at stellar energies for nuclei far from stability, whether in the cosmos or here on Earth. "We don't know what the chain of reactions is within stars, but we can figure out what the probability of certain reactions is," Tribble said. "For this study, we are focusing on p-gamma and n-gamma reaction rates, which are important in calculating how stars are born." Tribble's individual research group within the Cyclotron Institute is helping to develop the necessary equipment for the collaboration's experimental program -- specifically, a large silicon detector array that will incorporate both existing state-of-the-art technology and generate cost-effective extensions of that technology to enable silicon detector readout. Meanwhile, Blackmon's LSU group is working with the Texas A&M and Washington University groups to incorporate front-end electronics into a working portable data acquisition (DAQ) system that will allow user-friendly inspection and analysis and ultimately easy integration between laboratories. Blackmon's team will be in charge of maintaining this software and providing the integration and linkages between the current software and the proposed systems at both Texas A&M and RIKEN. "We also plan to implement the hardware so that it can be inspected via an Internet interface from anywhere in the world," Tribble said. "This requires a merger of two technologies already in use by Washington University. Such a system can have all eyes on a problem in short order and should probably be considered a requirement of the new century." With Japanese funding now secured for a very large new spectrometer, SAMURAI, to be built at RIKEN, Tribble says the time is right to begin developing a detector system that can be used in conjunction with SAMURAI to carry out a broad range of reaction and breakup studies at RIKEN energies -- a program that eclipses the initial suite of experiments proposed by the collaboration in its original letter of intent to RIKEN in January 2008. "The technology that we will develop will have broad application at many existing nuclear physics laboratories using stable or rare isotope beams, in addition to future RIB facilities," Tribble said. "And the training of students and postdoctoral research associates will be important contributions to the future workforce in this field." To learn more about the project, overall scope of work or partners involved in the $800,000 Department of Energy award, which runs through 2014, visit http://cyclotron.tamu.edu.

Pakistani & Indian scientists speak out on nuclear race issue

From International News Pakistan: Pakistan: Pakistani & Indian scientists speak out on nuclear race issue


Islamabad

While the civilised world tussles with the theories of war and peace and people of this region worry about an impending nuclear war, a new book arrives on the bookshelf that brings forth the nuclear race issue in a vibrant and dynamic way as expressed by Pakistani and Indian scientists in their essays.

Edited by Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy and published by the Oxford University Press Pakistan, the book titled ‘Confronting the Bomb: Pakistani & Indian Scientists Speak Out’, is a compilation of essays on the issue of nuclear race in South Asia by eminent Pakistani and Indian scientists.

Authored by scientists from both sides of the Pakistan-India divide, ‘Confronting the Bomb’ fearlessly explores tabooed, but urgent nuclear issues. The book offers a rich range of complexities surrounding the issue in both political and semi-technical approach to the concerned citizens, policy-makers, and nuclear experts.

Beginning with the coming of the atomic age to India, and later to Pakistan, the book looks at the furious nuclear race after the 1998 nuclear tests. What are the principal drivers and where lies the future? It goes on to examine Pakistan’s changing strategic nuclear objectives, the Kargil conflict, and the fact that ownership of the bomb is now claimed by Islamic political parties. The worrying issue of the safety and security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is considered in the background of an ideological divide within the military.

The somewhat more technical articles in the book deal with early warning issues; the battlefield use of nuclear weapons; problems related to the fissile materials treaty; and the likely effects of a limited nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India. Two essays deal with nuclear electricity generation, making the point that this may not be the promised panacea for the subcontinent’s energy problem. Rejecting nuclear nationalism, this is a unique work by Pakistanis and Indians working together to warn of nuclear dangers.

“Age of nukes has passed. They belonged to middle of the 20th Century, not to 21st Century. Nukes don’t bring prestige to a country now,” said Dr. Hoodbhoy while launching the book at the Kuch Khaas recently in collaboration with the Oxford University Press in Islamabad. His comments during the interactive session did offer some solace to people worrying about the impending nuclear war, however, interesting questions were raised by the audience that brought out relevant theories floating around regarding the issue.

Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy has taught at the Department of Physics, Quaid-i-Azam University, since 1973 and now also teaches at the School of Science and Engineering (LUMS). He received a PhD in nuclear physics from MIT, as well as degrees in mathematics, electrical engineering and physics from MIT. He was awarded the Abdus Salam Prize for Mathematics, the Baker Award for Electronics, and the Unesco Kalinga Prize for the popularisation of science. His research interests lie in theoretical high-energy physics. He was a council member of Pugwash, and is a sponsor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. As an advocate of the scientific method, he authored ‘Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality’. As producer and presenter, he made several documentary series for television aimed at popularising science as well as for analysing the Pakistani education system. He heads a book publishing organisation in Lahore focusing on modern thought and human rights. 

Dark matter detector nearing activation in SD mine

From Yahoo News:  Dark matter detector nearing activation in SD mine

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Scientists hoping to detect dark matter deep in a former South Dakota gold mine have taken the last major step before flipping the switch on their delicate experiment and say they may be ready to begin collecting data as early as February.

What's regarded as the world's most sensitive dark matter detector was lowered earlier this month into a 70,000-gallon water tank nearly a mile beneath the earth's surface, shrouding it in enough insulation to hopefully isolate dark matter from the cosmic radiation that makes it impossible to detect above ground.

And if all goes as planned, the data that begins flowing could answer age-old questions about the universe and its origins, scientists said Monday.

"We might well uncover something fantastic," said Harry Nelson, a professor of physics at University of California, Santa Barbara and a principal investigator on the Large Underground Xenon experiment. "One thing about our field is that it's kind of brutal in that we know it's expensive and we work hard to only do experiments that are really important."

This one hasn't been cheap, at about $10 million, but like the discovery of the Higgs boson — dubbed the "God particle" by some — earlier this year in Switzerland, the detection of dark matter would be a seismic occurrence in the scientific community.

Scientists know dark matter exists by its gravitational pull but, unlike regular matter and antimatter, it's so far been undetectable. Regular matter accounts for about 4 percent of the universe's mass, and dark matter makes up about 25 percent. The rest is dark energy, which is also a mystery.

The search in South Dakota began in 2003 after the Homestake Gold Mine in the Black Hills' Lead, S.D., shuttered for good. Scientists called dibs on the site, and in July, after years of fundraising and planning, the LUX detector moved into the Sanford Underground Research Facility, 4,850 feet below the earth's surface. It took two days to ease the phone booth-sized detector down the once-filthy shaft and walkways that originally opened for mining in 1876 during the Black Hills Gold Rush.

There, the device was further insulated from cosmic radiation by being submerged in water that's run through reverse osmosis filters to deionize and clean it.
"The construction phase is winding down, and now we're starting the commissioning phase, meaning we start to operate the systems underground," said Jeremy Mock, a graduate student at the University of California, Davis who has worked on the LUX experiment for five years.
Carefully submerging the delicate detector into its final home — a water-filled vat that's 20 feet tall and 25 feet in diameter — took more than two months, Mock said.
Scientists are currently working to finish the plumbing needed to keep the xenon as clean as possible. The xenon, in both liquid and gas form, will fill the detector and be continuously circulated through a purifier that works much like a dialysis machine, pulling the substance out to remove impurities before pushing it back into the detector.
Keeping the water and xenon pristine will help remove what Nelson called "fake sources" — or stuff that scientists have seen before, such as radiation, that could serve as false alarms in their efforts to detect dark matter.
Nelson likens the experiment to Sherlock Holmes' approach to discovering the unknown by eliminating the known.

Once the data start to flow, it'll take a month or two before the detector is sensitive enough to claim the "most-sensitive" title, Nelson said.

After that, the scientists involved hope to start seeing what they covet most: something they've never seen before.

 

Physics Students Make Zombie Movie Decay Deep Within the Bowels of CERN

From Wired:  Physics Students Make Zombie Movie Decay Deep Within the Bowels of CERN

If you ever thought CERN would be a fun place to work you’d only be half right: The scientists who work there might be awesome, but the nuclear research center makes the perfect setting for a zombie apocalypse.
Forthcoming feature film Decay is set entirely at the Large Hadron Collider, with the massive lab serving as backdrop for a dire scenario in which zombies have been created by exposure to the recently discovered Higgs boson (so much for that whole “God Particle” thing). The concept evolved in 2010 after writer/director Luke Thompson, a Ph.D. physics student at the University of Manchester, was exploring the maintenance tunnels of the European Organization for Nuclear Research along with fellow student Hugo Day.
“The dark, creepy atmosphere got us thinking it would be a great location for a horror film,” Thompson said in an e-mail to Wired.
As with George A. Romero’s 1968 zombie classic Night of the Living Dead, which was filmed mostly in rural Pennsylvania and used inexpensive props to keep production costs low, Decay’s ghoulish tale came to life thanks to the DIY spirit of indie filmmakers determined to make a movie on the cheap.

Clara Nellist, another Ph.D. student at Manchester, had also envisioned CERN as a great location for a zombie film. But there was a problem: Nellist, who would become the movie’s assistant director and associate producer, and Thompson had never made films before. Neither had future “fight choreographer” and props guy Day.
Undaunted by their lack of experience, they borrowed digital SLR cameras, recruited 17 other people for their project, made a bunch of fake blood, dumpster-dived for props and invested about $3,225 of their own money in Decay. The movie, which took two years to complete, is slated to be released before the end of November as a free download.
In addition to the awesomeness that is physics students at CERN making a zombie movie and giving it away, the film might also prove educational.

“The theme and location also gave us a great chance to do some satirical commentary on various aspects of people’s perceptions of science.”

— Luke Thompson

“I don’t want to spoil the film, but we realized the theme and location also gave us a great chance to do some satirical commentary on various aspects of people’s perceptions of science,” Thompson said. “So there are some hidden depths to the film too, beyond us just having fun!”
That said, Decay does look like a hell of a lot of fun. Set in the underground tunnels of the Geneva research center, the flick follows what happens to a small group of students after a malfunction at the particle accelerator causes its maintenance crew to become zombified and hunt them down.
Will they live? Will they get eaten? Will they blind the walking dead with science and become heroes to physicists everywhere? Everyone will be able to find out in a few weeks.
The movie was filmed only in areas that are accessible to anyone working at CERN, and even though officials there didn’t endorse the project, Thompson said he got permission to release Decay. In a statement to Wired, the research center stressed that the movie wasn’t filmed in the sensitive LHC tunnels, but added, “The story is amusing and pure fiction, but shows how pure science can stimulate creativity.”
Having a chance to make a cool movie at an outstanding research facility was one of the reasons the filmmakers decided to make Decay available for free and remixable through a Creative Commons license.
“We’ve been given a great and rare opportunity to have fun and make something awesome, so making money was never the point,” Thompson said. “We’re hugely proud of what we’ve achieved — the fact is that it’s a no-budget indie and there’s no reason to expect we’d sell more than a few hundred copies. So we’d rather our two years of work was seen by more people by releasing it for free.”