News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

Release describes application of machine learning form of artificial intelligence to predict the behavior of fusion plasma.

Researchers provide the first direct evidence for a rare kind of atomic nucleus. The special nickel nucleus (78Ni) is an isotope of typical nickel (58Ni), meaning they share the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons. Usually more neutrons make isotopes less stable, but this isotope is special. 78Ni is more tough or rigid than other nickel isotopes with similar numbers of neutrons -- it takes more energy to excite 78Ni into a different state.

A years-long study that involved scientists and experiments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley concludes that an odd assortment of particles found in beach sands in Japan are most likely fallout debris from the 1945 Hiroshima A-bomb blast.

Collisions of lead nuclei take place under extreme physical conditions. Their course can be described using a model which assumes that the transforming, extremely hot matter -- the quark-gluon plasma -- flows in the form of hundreds of streaks. Until now, the 'fire streaks' seemed to be purely theoretical structures. However, the latest analysis of collisions of individual protons reinforces the hypothesis that they represent a real physical phenomenon.

Radioactive carbon released into the atmosphere from 20th-century nuclear bomb tests has reached the deepest parts of the ocean, a new study in AGU's journal Geophysical Research Letters finds. Crustaceans in deep ocean trenches have incorporated this 'bomb carbon' into the molecules that make up their bodies.

In a paper to be published tomorrow in the journal Nature, researchers announce that they have observed the radioactive decay of xenon-124, which has a half-life of 1.8 X 1022 years.