Dubna lab finds second isotope of element 114
Until the Dubna experiments all artificial superheavy nuclei had half-lives that were measured in milliseconds. However, the most stable nuclei on the island of stability are predicted to have half-li...
First Teller professor appointed in the US
The department has close links with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, also in California, which Teller played a key role in establishing in the early 1950s. The applied science department at...
Element 118 discovered at Berkeley
The new elements were made by bombarding a lead-208 target with an intense beam of high- energy krypton-86 ions over an 11-day period. The krypton ions were accelerated by the 88-inch cyclotron at the...
US nuclear labs step up security
The report has already led to security being tightened at all laboratories run the Department of Energy, including those at Los Alamos and Livermore. Fears over the new security regime – visitor...
Pugwash calls for new roles for Aldermaston
Aldermaston has over 4000 employees and a budget of £300m. Over half of this (£168m) is spent on the manufacture, maintenance and testing of nuclear weapons, and on related research. Another...
Read article: Light plays tricks with nuclei
Light plays tricks with nuclei
Just as electrons can be excited inside an atom, neutrons and protons can be excited from their ground states into higher-energy states inside the nucleus. If these states have long half-lifes then th...
Nuclear monitoring network passes first test
Governments that have signed the CTBT – which will come into force this September – are concerned that countries such as Iran, India and Iraq might try to develop so called ‘sub-crit...
Nobel laureate Glenn Seaborg dies
Seaborg shared the 1951 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with the physicist Edwin McMillan. In addition to a long career at the University of California and the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, both in Berkele...
Whatever happened to cold fusion?
Some researchers remain adamant that cold fusion is real, as David Voss reports
Heavy nuclei start to shape up
The existence of superheavy elements was predicted about 30 years ago on the basis of the nuclear shell model, which was originally developed in 1949. The model explains why nuclei with certain “...
