Physics Buzz

Poignant and bleak, the critically acclaimed HBO series Chernobyl revisits a difficult chapter in history to tell an important story about the role of science in society. While portions of the plot and characters have been embellished for TV, its an exceptional portrayal of what can happen when a community ignores the signs of an impending disaster (i.e. climate change) and includes surprisingly accurate and accessible explanations of nuclear physics.  On twitter , the show has also reignited an important discussion on nuclear power and its associated hazards. It is necessary to acknowledge that while some risks will always be there, nuclear power is actually safer than ever, and importantly, it could help curb our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels. To learn more about this funky world of radioactive physics, we’re going to answer some questions about how our nuclear landscape has changed since 1986 (I’d say spoiler alert, but that’s not really applicable to historical events

Hold the sriracha, put down the bbq sauce, and toss the mustard, because mayonnaise is finally getting its time to shine. Rather than spreading the condiment colloid on a sandwich though, researchers are using the product to study how materials interact in nuclear fusion reactors. A team of scientists from Lehigh University just published their latest research in Physical Review Fluids , which illustrates how this common household item can be used to explore a surprising question.

What do the nation of Japan, the state of Tennessee, and the city of Moscow have in common with Russian nuclear physicist Yuri Oganessian? If you hadn't guessed, all four just had elements named after them, marking the observation and naming of all elements in the seventh row of the periodic table. The periodic table of elements, complete with its latest additions. If the universe is a game of Tetris, we definitely just beat a level.

"I love physics with all my heart ...  It is a kind of personal love, as one has for  a person to whom one is grateful for many things." - Lise Meitner, 1915  On February 11th 1939 Austrian physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch published a one page note in Nature describing the impossible: the splitting of a uranium atom into two lighter elements, barium and krypton. They coined this process " fission " as an analogue to biological fission process of cell division and ignited immediate interest in nuclear physics labs around the world. But the discovery came at exactly the wrong time for Meitner, and her primary role in both the experimental and theoretical discovery of nuclear fission would never be properly awarded.

This is the first sample of plutonium big enough to be seen by the naked eye. Probably. There's a sticker on the side that claiming it's the first plutonium sample large enough to be weighed, but the papers documenting the origins of this atomic artifact have long since disappeared. Scientists at Berkeley have had to rely on nuclear forensics to substantiate whether this radioactive fleck was really produced in 1942 by the physicist who first discovered the element, Glenn Seaborg. "I am 99 percent sure that's what this is," said Eric Norman , a nuclear engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "[But] we can't prove it unless you find Seaborg's DNA or his fingerprints on it." The plutonium fleck, magnified. Image: Eric Norman If this little radioactive fleck is actually the sample it claims to be, which seems likely, its historical significance is huge. Plutonium was one of the very first artificial elements create

Radiation is most infamous for its harmful effects on living things, but when used properly, it can have some beneficial effects as well. Radioisotopes , radioactive versions of ordinary elements, can trace the paths of substances through complicated systems and diagnose and treat diseases like cancer. As Angela Creager highlighted in her book, Life Atomic  and this week's podcast , much of today's radiation applications in medicine can themselves be traced back to the 1950s when the U.S. Atomic Energy Agency wanted to promote the peaceful side of atomic power. The idea of using atomic energy for medicine has been around since radiation was discovered. Some of the early treatments were quackery , but some haven't fundamentally changed very much over the years. Though its gone through numerous refinements over the years, teletherapy bombards cancer cells with targeted radiation. Image: National Institutes of Health

In recent weeks the European science lab CERN has been uploading gobs of photos from their archives onto their publicly accessible document server . It's part of their 60th anniversary celebration and is a fascinating window into how fundamental science was done during the groovy '60s and funkadelic '70s. There are literally tens of thousands of photos, with dozens more uploaded each day. The shutterbugs in Geneva took pictures of everything, from scientists working to construction projects and experimental equipment. The archivists at CERN are having a hard time identifying everybody and everything in the photos and have started calling on the public to write in with the names of any as yet unidentified people, equipment and experiments . I've spent the last few days sorting through the huge collection of photos to pick out the best, weirdest and most retro ones uploaded so far.

An international collaboration of scientists has  created element 117 in a laboratory at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany. Element 117—temporarily referred to as ununseptium—was first created in 2010. The new work confirms that those earlier results are repeatable using a different instrument. Element 117 is the second heaviest element ever created, landing just behind 118. It offers nuclear physicists an extreme example of how atomic nuclei behave, and thus a way to put their theories for lighter nuclei to the test. In addition, scientists are interested in seeing just how many protons and neutrons can be packed into an atomic nucleus. Is there an end to the periodic table ? But perhaps the most exciting prospect is how this research brings scientists closer to finding "the island of stability."  While most super heavy nuclei are large and unwieldy, and tend to break apart in less than a second. But theory suggests there may be comb