YouTube video by Nuclear Theory Group at FRIB - MSU

YouTube video by k9774

ALT: Happy Halloween Ghost Dance

Scientists have traced a decades-old gamma-ray mystery to hidden magnetic transitions inside atomic nuclei. For decades, nuclear physicists have faced a puzzling question: why do some atomic nuclei release far more low-energy gamma rays than expected? A new study led by the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), with contributions from scientists at Lawrence Livermore [...]

Scientists have traced a decades-old gamma-ray mystery to hidden magnetic transitions inside atomic nuclei. For decades, nuclear physicists have faced a puzzling question: why do some atomic nuclei release far more low-energy gamma rays than expected? A new study led by the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), with contributions from scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), may finally provide the answer. Published in Nature, the research offers new insight into the inner workings of atomic nuclei and could have important implications for astrophysics, nuclear energy, national security, and nuclear forensics. A Decades-Old Gamma-Ray Puzzle Gamma rays are a form of electromagnetic radiation, just like visible light and radio waves, but they carry much more energy. When an atomic nucleus is in an excited state, it can release gamma rays as it decays into a lower and more stable energy state. For years, scientists have noticed that some nuclei produce an unexpectedly large number of low-energy gamma rays. This phenomenon, known as “low-energy enhancement,” has been difficult to explain. It does not appear in every nucleus, and researchers have had no reliable way to predict where it will occur. “This low-energy enhancement wasn’t predicted by theory, so it was...