News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

Scientists from the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and their colleagues from the international ALICE collaboration recently collided Xenon nuclei, in order to gain new insights into the properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (the QGP). The QGP is a special state consisting of the fundamental particles, the quarks, and the particles that bind the quarks together, the gluons. The result was obtained using the ALICE experiment at the superconducting Large Hadron Collider. The result is now published in Physics Letters B.

In new MIT report, study authors analyze the reasons for the current global stall of nuclear energy capacity and discuss measures that could be taken to arrest and reverse that trend.

The quantum computers of the future will be able to perform computations that cannot be done on today's computers. These may likely include the ability to crack the encryption that is currently used for secure electronic transactions, as well as the means to efficiently solve unwieldy problems in which the number of possible solutions increases exponentially.

Researchers advise caution as a commercial-scale nuclear reactor known as HTR-PM prepares to become operational in China. The reactor is a pebble-bed, high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR), a design that is ostensibly safer but that researchers in the US and Germany warn does not eliminate the possibility of a serious accident. Their commentary, publishing Aug. 23, 2018 in the journal Joule, recommends continued research, additional safety measures, and an extended startup phase allowing for better monitoring.

In a set of recent experiments, scientists have tamed a damaging plasma instability in a way that could lead to the efficient and steady-state operation of ITER, the international tokamak experiment under construction in France to demonstrate the practicality of fusion power.