Nobel laureate Glenn Seaborg dies
Seaborg shared the 1951 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with the physicist Edwin McMillan. In addition to a long career at the University of California and the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, both in Berkele...
Heavy nuclei start to shape up
The existence of superheavy elements was predicted about 30 years ago on the basis of the nuclear shell model, which was originally developed in 1949. The model explains why nuclei with certain “...
Whatever happened to cold fusion?
Some researchers remain adamant that cold fusion is real, as David Voss reports
First hint of element 114 seen in Dubna
Researchers at the Dubna Laboratory of Heavy Ion Nuclear Reactions in Russia, headed by Yuri Oganessian, collaborating with a team from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, made the d...
Thomson scattering goes relativistic
Donald Umstadter and co-workers used a neodymium-glass laser to illuminate helium gas in a vacuum chamber. The team were able to focus 4 trillion watts of power on the gas. The electric field of the l...
UK plans £65m facility
The UK at present has no nuclear physics facilities of its own, and very little investment in facilities overseas. “SIRIUS would open up many opportunities in a number of areas, most notably in ...
India and Pakistan lied about nuclear tests
These latest results, according to Barker et al., indicate “high confidence” that the network being set up to monitor the CTBT can indeed verify small nuclear explosions. Concerns over the...
Secret files reveal plan to kidnap Bohr
Bohr had escaped from German-occupied Denmark in September 1943 and crossed the Atlantic to work with British and American physicists on the Manhattan atomic-bomb project at Los Alamos. However, he re...
Deuterium ‘shocked’ into metallic state
Gilbert Collins and colleagues used the NOVA laser at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to carry out the experiments (Science 281 1178). The deuterium was placed in a small copp...
Solving the plutonium problem
Russia and the US each have 50 tons of weapons-grade plutonium to dispose of by either converting it into fuel, or mixing it in with radioactive waste. At the same time, France and the UK separate 20 ...
