| For the first time ever, a team
of scientists, headed by a group from Indiana University working at
the Brookhaven National Laboratory, with the help of the Indiana Silicon
Sphere (ISiS) detector as the thermometer and pressure gauge, have"cooked
up," in the form of a diagram, the way nuclear matter goes from
the liquid phase to the gas phase.
Results of the experimentation and its importance to the study of astrophysics are reported in the Jan. 8 issue of Physics News Update.
Victor Viola, IU Distinguished Professor of chemistry, along with colleagues and students at the IUB Department of Chemistry, built the ISiS between 1990 and 1993. One of only a handful of such detectors in existence, the detector measures the characteristics of particles that result from exploding nuclei during nuclear collisions. Interestingly, by studying the way matter acts on an atomic scale, scientists can begin to understand the way matter acts on a stellar scale.
Read more at this Web site:
http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2002/split/572-2.html
Hear Viola discuss “All Explosions Big and Small” in this archived audiostream:
http://www.broadcast.iu.edu/lectures/sonneborn/index.html
Fascinated? Check out this archived article in IU’s Research and Creative Activity:
http://www.indiana.edu/~rcapub/v21n2/p30.html
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