Featured
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News Q&A |
The science of Oppenheimer: meet the Oscar-winning movie’s specialist advisers
Oppenheimer has been praised for its portrayal of the creation of the atomic bomb. Nature spoke to three scientists involved in the film’s production.
- Jonathan O'Callaghan
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Correspondence |
Space and nuclear pioneers show the value of empowering women in STEM
- Farhan M. Asrar
- , Safa Siddiqui
- & Soyeon Yi
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Essay |
The spy who flunked it: Kurt Gödel’s forgotten part in the atom-bomb story
Robert Oppenheimer’s isn’t the only film-worthy story from the nuclear age. Kurt Gödel’s cameo as a secret agent was surprising — and itself a bomb.
- Karl Sigmund
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News |
Building used by Marie Curie will be dismantled to erect cancer centre
The disused and formerly radioactive Pavillon des Sources in Paris will be rebuilt nearby, after an agreement between scientists and the French culture ministry.
- Nisha Gaind
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News |
Pioneering nuclear-fusion reactor shuts down: what scientists will learn
The decommissioning of the Joint European Torus near Oxford, UK — a test bed for ITER — will take until 2040 and be studied in detail.
- Elizabeth Gibney
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News |
US nuclear-fusion lab enters new era: achieving ‘ignition’ over and over
Researchers at the National Ignition Facility are consistently creating reactions that make more energy than they consume.
- Jeff Tollefson
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News Feature |
Nuclear-fusion breakthrough: this physicist helped to achieve the first-ever energy gain
Annie Kritcher and her team at the US National Ignition Facility designed fusion experiments that generated more energy than they consumed.
- Jeff Tollefson
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Research Briefing |
Scandium-45 nuclear-clock candidate driven by X-ray lasers
Precise timekeeping is key to many technologies, motivating the search for more-stable reference oscillators for use as clocks. The resonant X-ray excitation of a long-lived nuclear state in scandium-45 makes it a potential reference oscillator for a nuclear clock that could surpass atomic clocks in stability and resilience against external perturbations.
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Article
| Open AccessResonant X-ray excitation of the nuclear clock isomer 45Sc
Resonant X-ray excitation of the 45Sc nuclear isomeric state was achieved by irradiation of a Sc-metal foil with 12.4-keV photon pulses from a state-of-the-art X-ray free-electron laser, allowing a high-precision determination of the transition energy.
- Yuri Shvyd’ko
- , Ralf Röhlsberger
- & Tomasz Kolodziej
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Article
| Open AccessFirst observation of 28O
Observation of 28O and 27O through their decay into 24O and four and three neutrons, respectively, is reported, with the 28O nucleus being of particular interest owing to proton and neutron magic numbers and its extremely asymmetric neutron-to-proton ratio.
- Y. Kondo
- , N. L. Achouri
- & S. Yoshida
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News & Views |
Heaviest oxygen isotope is found to be unbound
The isotope oxygen-28 is expected to be ‘doubly magic’, with strongly bound neutrons and protons in its nucleus. Experiments now reveal that it exists in an unbound state — casting doubt on its magic status.
- Rituparna Kanungo
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News |
Rare oxygen isotope detected at last — and it defies expectations
Oxygen-28 might prompt physicists to revamp theories of how atomic nuclei are structured.
- Katherine Bourzac
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News Q&A |
Why Oppenheimer has important lessons for scientists today
Atomic bomb historian Richard Rhodes talks to Nature about how researchers fare in the film, and what it gets right and wrong.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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News Explainer |
Is Fukushima wastewater release safe? What the science says
Radiation in the water will be diluted to almost-background levels, but some researchers are not sure this will be sufficient to mitigate the risks.
- Bianca Nogrady
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News & Views |
Photon lights a path towards a nuclear clock
A long-sought photon that is emitted by the nucleus of a thorium isotope has now been observed. The feat is a key step in efforts to build a nuclear clock, a device that is precise enough to probe the Universe’s best-kept secrets.
- Adriana Pálffy
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Article |
Observation of the radiative decay of the 229Th nuclear clock isomer
The authors report on the radiative decay of a low-energy isomer in thorium-229 (229mTh), which has consequences for the design of a future nuclear clock and eases the search for direct laser excitation of the atomic nucleus.
- Sandro Kraemer
- , Janni Moens
- & Ulrich Wahl
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News Explainer |
This pioneering nuclear-fusion lab is gearing up to break more records
Following the US National Ignition Facility’s breakthrough last year, Nature looks at what’s next.
- Jeff Tollefson
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Article |
Determining the gluonic gravitational form factors of the proton
The gluonic gravitational form factor of the proton was determined using various models, and these analyses showed that the mass radius of the proton was smaller than the electric charge radius.
- B. Duran
- , Z.-E. Meziani
- & Z. Zhao
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Article
| Open AccessMeasurement of the axial vector form factor from antineutrino–proton scattering
The authors measure the nucleon axial vector form factor, which encodes information on the distribution of the nucleon weak charge, through antineutrino–proton scattering.
- T. Cai
- , M. L. Moore
- & L. Zazueta
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Article |
Pattern of global spin alignment of ϕ and K*0 mesons in heavy-ion collisions
At the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, observations of two meson species produced by heavy-ion collisions, ϕ and K*0, show surprising patterns of global spin alignment, being unexpectedly large and consistent with zero, respectively.
- M. S. Abdallah
- , B. E. Aboona
- & M. Zyzak
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News & Views |
Nuclear reaction rules out sterile-neutrino hypothesis
An anomalous measurement from a nuclear reactor triggered a three-year campaign to find an elusive particle called the sterile neutrino. The search shows definitively that sterile neutrinos don’t exist — but the anomaly persists.
- Jun Cao
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Article |
STEREO neutrino spectrum of 235U fission rejects sterile neutrino hypothesis
Accurate measurements of the antineutrino energy spectrum of 235U fission by the STEREO detector reject the sterile neutrino hypothesis and point to biases in the nuclear data to explain the discrepancies with the prediction.
- H. Almazán
- , L. Bernard
- & M. Vialat
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News Explainer |
Nuclear-fusion lab achieves ‘ignition’: what does it mean?
Researchers at the US National Ignition Facility created a reaction that made more energy than they put in.
- Jeff Tollefson
- & Elizabeth Gibney
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News & Views |
An underground route to grasping the Milky Way’s oldest stars
Nuclear-fusion experiments performed deep under Earth’s surface reveal one possible scenario that could have resulted in the chemical abundances found in an ancient star in the Milky Way.
- Marco Pignatari
- & Athanasios Psaltis
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Article |
Measurement of 19F(p, γ)20Ne reaction suggests CNO breakout in first stars
Observation of a new resonance in the 19-fluorine to 20-neon thermonuclear reaction at the China JinPing Underground Laboratory (over 2 km below ground) may provide clues to observed discrepancies in calcium production in the evolution of the first stars.
- Liyong Zhang
- , Jianjun He
- & Weiping Liu
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Article |
Measured proton electromagnetic structure deviates from theoretical predictions
Measurements of the proton’s electromagnetic structure show enhancement of its electric generalized polarizability compared with theoretical expectations, confirming the presence of a new dynamical mechanism not accounted for by current theories.
- R. Li
- , N. Sparveris
- & J. Zhou
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News & Views |
From the archive: detecting counterfeit whisky, and the legends behind Scottish boulders
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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News |
World’s largest fusion experiment ITER appoints new chief
Pietro Barabaschi, who will take over as director-general of ITER in October, plans to improve integration between collaborating agencies.
- Elizabeth Gibney
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Spotlight |
Why France’s nuclear industry faces uncertainty
No other country produces more nuclear power per capita. But climate change, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and French politics could change that.
- Benjamin Plackett
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Article |
Revealing the short-range structure of the mirror nuclei 3H and 3He
A comparison of electron scattering from the mirror nuclei hydrogen-3 and helium-3 reveals that proton–proton pairs have a much larger contribution to short-range correlations in helium-3 than in heavier nuclei, implying an unexpected nuclear structure.
- S. Li
- , R. Cruz-Torres
- & X. Zheng
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News |
Exclusive: Laser-fusion facility heads back to the drawing board
US scientists evaluate their options after failing to replicate record-setting experiment from 2021.
- Jeff Tollefson
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Article |
Nuclear moments of indium isotopes reveal abrupt change at magic number 82
Precision laser spectroscopy measurements of neutron-rich indium isotopes were performed to investigate the validity and identify limitations of theoretical descriptions of nuclei based on simple single-particle approaches.
- A. R. Vernon
- , R. F. Garcia Ruiz
- & D. T. Yordanov
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Nature Podcast |
Norovirus could spread through saliva: a new route for infection?
A new transmission route for gastrointestinal viruses, and an exotic kind of matter made from just neutrons.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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World View |
Nuclear power can help the democratic world achieve energy independence
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the need to improve energy security.
- Nicolas Mazzucchi
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News & Views |
Collisions hint that four neutrons form a transient isolated entity
An experiment firing helium-8 nuclei at a proton target has generated evidence that four neutrons can exist transiently without any other matter. But doubts remain, because the existence of such systems is at odds with theory.
- Lee G. Sobotka
- & Maria Piarulli
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Article
| Open AccessObservation of a correlated free four-neutron system
Experiment based on knocking out an alpha particle from a high-energy helium isotope shows a resonance-like structure that is consistent with a quasi-bound tetraneutron state existing for a very short time.
- M. Duer
- , T. Aumann
- & M. V. Zhukov
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Obituary |
Bernard Bigot (1950–2022)
Director-general of ITER, the world’s largest fusion experiment.
- Eisuke Tada
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News & Views |
Tiny isotopic difference tests standard model of particle physics
A high-precision comparison of the magnetic moments of two isotopically different neon ions opens a path to the search for elusive particles that could explain the unexpectedly low observed mass of the Higgs boson.
- Gerald Gwinner
- & Roshani Silwal
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Article
| Open AccessConstraining neutron-star matter with microscopic and macroscopic collisions
The physics of dense matter extracted from neutron star collision data is demonstrated to be consistent with information obtained from heavy-ion collisions, and analyses incorporating both data sources as well as information from nuclear theory provide new constraints for neutron star matter.
- Sabrina Huth
- , Peter T. H. Pang
- & Chris Van Den Broeck
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News & Views |
Diverse data tighten constraints for neutron stars
Analysis of data from astrophysical and terrestrial sources offers a promising way of narrowing the range of parameters that describe the extreme properties of neutron stars.
- Jorge Noronha
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Article
| Open AccessDirect measurement of the 3He+ magnetic moments
Measuring the hyperfine structure of a single helium-3 ion in a Penning trap enables direct measurement of the nuclear magnetic moment of helium-3 and provides the high accuracy needed for NMR-based magnetometry.
- A. Schneider
- , B. Sikora
- & K. Blaum
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Article
| Open AccessProbing CP symmetry and weak phases with entangled double-strange baryons
Using spin-entangled baryon–antibaryon pairs, the BESIII Collaboration reports on high-precision measurements of potential charge conjugation and parity (CP)-symmetry-violating effects in hadrons.
- M. Ablikim
- , M. N. Achasov
- & J. H. Zou
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Article
| Open AccessDirect observation of the dead-cone effect in quantum chromodynamics
The direct measurement of the QCD dead cone in charm quark fragmentation is reported, using iterative declustering of jets tagged with a fully reconstructed charmed hadron.
- S. Acharya
- , D. Adamova
- & N. Zurlo
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News |
Exotic nuclei, record-breaking robot — the week in infographics
Nature highlights three key graphics from the week in science and research.
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News |
Long-awaited accelerator ready to explore origins of elements
The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams will be the first to produce and analyse hundreds of isotopes crucial to physics.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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News & Views |
Cryogenic mastery aids bid to spot elusive matter creation
A cubic metre of tellurium held at cryogenic temperatures over many years has enabled a search for matter created in a rare nuclear process. The feat bodes well for stabilizing other complex systems at low temperatures.
- Jason Detwiler
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Nature Podcast |
Five years in the coldest fridge in the known Universe
Searching for an elusive process that could explain a cosmic imbalance, and solving the mystery of the missing microbial plasmids.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Benjamin Thompson
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Article
| Open AccessSearch for Majorana neutrinos exploiting millikelvin cryogenics with CUORE
The CUORE experiment finds no evidence for neutrinoless double beta decay after operating a large cryogenic TeO2 calorimeter stably for several years in an extreme low-radiation environment at a temperature of 10 millikelvin.
- D. Q. Adams
- , C. Alduino
- & S. Zucchelli