Animation offers a new view of the nucleus

NEWPORT NEWS, VA – There has never been a better time to brush up on your knowledge of the particles and forces that give rise to our visible universe: The year 2025 has been proclaimed the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology by the United Nations, recognizing 100 years since the initial development of quantum mechanics.

Now, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Sputnik Animation bring you a new animation of the particles and forces that dominate the quantum world, accompanied by a website exhibit featuring the visualization of the structure of matter throughout history.

A new video funded by Jefferson Lab, “Visualizing the Nucleus,” takes an animated look inside the heart of matter. The video was produced by Rolf Ent, a nuclear physicist at Jefferson Lab; Richard Milner, a nuclear physicist at MIT; and James LaPlante, an animator at Sputnik Animation. The team took their cue from ancient philosophers who pondered the makeup of matter.

Nearly 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Democritus proposed that everything was composed of common bits called atoms. By the early 20^th century, scientists solved many of the mysteries of the modern atom, revealing its protons, neutrons, and even the quarks and gluons buried inside. Today, nuclear physicists are working to better bring into focus this quantum world.

To “see” such small particles, physicists use particle accelerators to thump, bash or smash the particles inside the nucleus. Giant detectors gather information about the particles that stream out of these events. This information can be used to piece together what the particles looked like and how they were behaving when smashed – like a frozen moment in time.

But these experiments don’t provide handy little snapshots of what they’ve revealed. Instead, nuclear physicists get data points on a graph. The team had to interpret those data points to conceptualize an animation of the nucleus and its inner workings.

“It started with the proton. We have all this body of data, but we can't visualize it,” said Rolf Ent, a Jefferson Lab principal staff scientist and the lab’s co-associate director on the Electron-Ion Collider experimental program. “And then we started realizing that we have similar issues with the nucleus.”

However, the team realized that the data-driven view of the world that comes from nuclear physics experiments might be translated loosely into a description of what such particles may look like if they could be visualized directly.

“While I'm a science nerd, I do not have a degree in nuclear physics,” LaPlante explained. “So often I would have conversations with Richard and Rolf to better understand the physics going on at the quantum level.”

According to the team, even with smooth collaboration and an understanding of the physical concepts conveyed in modern nuclear physics experimental data, the project only succeeded once creative solutions were applied to the challenges of visualization.

For instance, the motion of the protons and neutrons inside a nucleus approach the speed of light. So, too, do the probes that allow nuclear physicists to gather information about those particles. To simplify the information shown in the animation, the physicists needed to get creative in how they would show particles and forces interacting inside matter at nearly light speed.

“It required a definition of a new unit of time: the baby second," said Milner, who is a professor of physics at MIT. “Once we realized this, then the motion could be animated more or less straightforwardly.”

The end result is a short animation and video that captures the dynamic interactions of particles and forces in their own quantum world.

“In ‘Visualizing the Nucleus,’ we specifically look, with the lens of protons and neutrons, at how the nucleus would appear,” Ent said. “What’s the size, the shape, the motion in nuclei with its main building blocks, the protons and neutrons? In the movie, you see that in reality, there's still also this quantum world dominated by quarks and gluons.”

The new video debuted to the team’s nuclear physics colleagues at the American Physical Society’s Division of Nuclear Physics meeting in October.

“It was very well received. It was played on loop on a TV in a public place during the meeting and received wide exposure,” Milner said. “I have distributed it to faculty colleagues and have received very positive responses.”

Along with the movie, the team also debuted an exhibit featuring a series of display modules that highlight how the quantum world has been conceived, discussed and represented throughout recorded human history. The modules are now available on the Visualizing the Quantum World website.

The team plans to follow their success with a few short videos that explore more advanced nuclear physics concepts. These may include descriptions of the phenomenon of neutrinoless double beta decay, explanations of spin polarization in nuclei, updates on short-range correlated pairs of protons and neutrons, and explorations of the electric dipole moments in distorted nuclei.

“Next, we're going to dive back into the nucleus to explore the quantum interactions going on between the protons and neutrons,” LaPlante said. “It's a chaotic space moving at light speed in an incredibly small volume. I'm looking forward to sorting through the chaos and manipulating time and space to better visualize what's going on inside every piece of matter in the universe.”

Further Reading
Visualizing the Quantum World
“Visualizing the Nucleus” video
“Visualizing the Proton” through animation and film video
Visualizing the Proton: Charting the Inner Structure of the Proton video
Now Presenting: A Visualization of the Proton
“Visualizing the Proton” Animation
Visualize the Proton With an Expert

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Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, operates the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, or Jefferson Lab, for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.