In the News
External news and journal publications discussing FRIB science.
Magnesium is the eighth-most abundant element in Earth’s crust. The new isotope is the world’s lightest magnesium. “It’s pretty exciting. It’s not every day people discover a new isotope.” Forged at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University, the new magnesium isotope is so unstable, it falls apart before scientists can measure it directly. Yet this isotope that isn’t keen on existing can help researchers better understand how the atoms that define our existence are made.
Scientists have just created the world's lightest form of magnesium—a never-before-seen isotope with just six neutrons in its atomic nuclei—inside the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University.
FRIB is featured in a list of Science's areas to watch in 2022. The fleeting atomic nuclei normally forged only in stellar explosions will find a home on Earth after the $730 million FRIB fires up at Michigan State University. The world’s most powerful ion source, the linear accelerator can fire any nucleus—from hydrogen’s single proton to uranium atoms’ massive core—into targets to produce new, unstable nuclei.
FRIB was featured in a list of themes set to shape research in 2022. The multi-stage accelerator aims to synthesize thousands of new isotopes of known elements, and it will investigate nuclear structure and the physics of neutron stars and supernova explosions.
The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science (DOE-SC) posted a highlight about the FRIB-affiliated Lee Research Group’s research paper titled “Rodeo Algorithm for Quantum Computing” published in Physical Review Letters. DOE-SC posts about 200 published research findings annually, selected by their respective program areas in DOE-SC as publication highlights of special note.
A team of researchers, including scientists from the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory and the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University, have solved the case of zirconium-80’s missing mass.
One of the most spectacular quantum effects in atomic nuclei is the emergence of a shell structure. Important questions such as the origin of an additional binding energy in nuclei, where neutrons and protons occupy the same shell orbitals, remain open. Now, as they describe in Nature Physics, FRIB's Alec Hamaker and colleagues have provided answers to this question by performing accurate mass measurements of zirconium isotopes.
Achim Schwenk (Institute of Nuclear Physics at the Darmstadt University of Technology), a member of the FRIB Users Organization, has been named on the annual Highly Cited Researchers 2021 list from Clarivate. Clarivate is a scientific publication analytics firm. The list identifies researchers who demonstrated significant influence in their chosen field or fields through the publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade. Their names are drawn from the publications that rank in the top 1 percent by citations for field and publication year in the “Web of Science” citation index.
Researchers are queuing up to use a particle accelerator at Michigan State University to study some of the rarest atomic nuclei. When it opens in early 2022, the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams will strip electrons off of atoms to make ions, rev them up to high speeds and then send them crashing into a target to make the special nuclei that scientists want to study.
About 20 years ago, a Michigan State University physicist had an idea to reveal insights about a fundamental but enigmatic force at work in some of the most extreme environments in the universe. These environments include an atom's nucleus and celestial bodies known as neutron stars, both of which are among the densest objects known to humanity.
The American Physical Society (APS) announced that it has selected FRIB’s Paul Guèye as the 2022 Edward A. Bouchet Award winner. APS recognized Guèye for his “many seminal experimental contributions to understanding the structure of nuclear particles and decades of service to physics outreach, diversity and inclusion.”
A drive to learn has propelled 16-year-old Maya Wallach to finish high school early and enroll at Michigan State University, where she is a sophomore studying experimental physics, and an intern at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams.
