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Physical Society Colloquium
Brad Sherrill
National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory The nuclear science community in the United States has just completed a planning process and written a document describing the priorities for the field for the next 5 to 10 years. The top priority for major new construction is the Rare Isotope Accelerator, RIA, which is estimated to cost 1B US$. Why is the main topic of this colloquium. Two aspects of the justification will be discussed. First, atomic nuclei are complicated many body objects where three of the four forces of nature play a role. Facilities like RIA, or TRIUMF in BC, provide us the ability to vary the ratio of neutron to protons in a nucleus and thus, provide a new view into nuclear structure. Second, our understanding of the origin of the elements and of various astrophysical environments is dependant on our knowledge of the properties of the nuclei which exist there. For most environments, only a fraction of the underlying nuclear science is know because at present we don't have the facilities to produce the isotopes of interest. The talk will survey some of the interesting and open scientific questions related to RIA. It will also describe how detailed experiments are done for the rarest isotopes, where only a few atoms per week are available for study.
Friday, April 5th 2002, 15:30 |