News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

University of Washington researchers have developed a method that uses a gaming graphics card to control plasma formation in their prototype fusion reactor.

Ten years after one of the largest nuclear accidents in history spewed radioactive contamination over the landscape in Fukushima, Japan, a University of Georgia study has shown that radioactive contamination in the Fukushima Exclusion Zone can be measured through its resident snakes.

This is the first ever capture of the ultrafast motions of a high intensity laser produced plasma on a solid surface, simultaneously at different spatial locations. It achieves an experimental leap in Doppler spectrometry and is important for tracking the flow of heat and energy along the surface and watching the growth of plasma instabilities, all very important for understanding laser plasma science and pushing forward applications of high intensity, femtosecond laser driven laser plasmas.

Research team created new glasses for protection against X-ray and gamma radiation. Scientists could select new components that improved the characteristics of the samples and allowed to reduce the amount of lead in the glass composition.

The study could have applications in spintronics and quantum computing. It was conducted by an international collaboration and published in Nature. Its first author is a researcher at the University of São Paulo.

"Heavy fermions" are an appealing theoretical way to produce quantum entangled phenomena, but until recently have been observed mostly in dangerously radioactive compounds. Researchers have now shown it is possible to make heavy fermions in subtly modified graphene, which is much cheaper and safer

There is a significant discrepancy between theoretical and observed amounts of lithium in our universe. This is known as the cosmological lithium problem, and it has plagued cosmologists for decades. Now, researchers have reduced this discrepancy by around 10%, thanks to a new experiment on the nuclear processes responsible for the creation of lithium. This research could point the way to a more complete understanding of the early universe.