New Research: Photon emission of exotic nuclei in stars
Atomic nuclei are complex little beasts. If, however, you are curious enough to look closely, you’ll see that these tiny constituents of matter are quite fascinating, and hide a lot of surprises. Together with being curious about the nuclei themselves, I personally am even more fascinated by how much the secret lives of atomic nuclei drive astrophysical phenomena. It is through nuclear processes that the elements we find in the Universe are created. Together with a group of c
Isotopes in the cosmos
I mentioned the basics of isotopes and why they are useful in our lives in a previous post. Here I wanted to talk about why isotopes matter in the Universe. We usually ask questions like “How are the elements created in stars?” or “What is the origin of heavy elements in the Universe?” or “How do stars make gold?". These are all great questions, but in reality things are a bit more complicated than they appear. The complication is that each of the elements can have many stabl
Why are we here? Or "An impossible nuclear reaction!"
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Why is there so much Iron in the Universe?
I get asked this question a lot: Why is there so much iron in the Universe? If you look at the big picture, our Universe, our Solar system, and even our own planet, are most abundant in hydrogen and helium, the two lightest elements. Then, it’s all-downhill from there: elements get less and less abundant the heavier they are. This is the general rule, but like every rule, there are exceptions. There are ups and downs, peaks and valleys, in the distribution of elements. Some o
Atomic age began 75 years ago with the first controlled nuclear chain reaction
The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. #nuclear #chainreaction #Fermi #energy #atomic #Chicagopile #Manhattanproject #fission #delayedneutrons #astrophysics
NEUTRON CAPTURE REACTIONS AND STELLAR EXPLOSIONS
We live in an era where multi-messenger astronomical research is becoming more and more common. This means that we can study the same stellar event using a broad range of instruments; optical, gamma-ray and X-ray telescopes are just a few examples of the capabilities we have. During the last year, a new capability was added, that of gravitational-wave observation. This new addition offers an exciting opportunity for the field of nuclear astrophysics; the possibility of a dire