Access

News and Views

Nature 425, 570-571 (9 October 2003) | doi:10.1038/425570a

Open Innovation Challenges

Nuclear physics: It's a knockout

David Warner1

Top

In collisions between nuclei, a proton or neutron might be knocked out of one nucleus. Now, two-proton knockout has been demonstrated, opening a new route to the creation of neutron-rich systems for study.

Most of our knowledge about the quantum nature of the atomic nucleus comes from the study of nuclear reactions in which an energetic beam of one nuclear species is directed onto a target made of another. Writing in Physical Review Letters, Bazin and colleagues1 have now demonstrated that it is possible to knock two protons simultaneously out of a nucleus in the high-energy beam, while leaving the remaining nucleons (neutrons and protons) largely undisturbed.

  1. Surface and Nuclear Division, Daresbury Laboratory, Daresbury, Warrington, Cheshire WA4 4AD, UK.
    Email: d.warner@dl.ac.uk