SIRIUS sees its first beam at GANIL
The SIRIUS detector before its tests campaigns (image by J. Piot, GANIL) Super-heavy elements do not exist in nature and can only be synthesized at accelerator facilities in minuscule amounts…
Experimental studies of clustering in light nuclei
Density of alpha clusters (left) and of the two excess neutrons (right) in Be-10 calculated by T. Otsuka et al., Nature Comm. 13,2234 (2022) (extract from figure 3, licensed under…
The astonishing superheavy elements
Part of the periodic table showing the heaviest elements discovered so far The infinitely large and the infinitely small are the natural limits of human perception. While situated at opposite…
The nuclear pygmy resonance studied at SPIRAL2-NFS
The detectors PARIS (left) and MONSTER (right) installed around the cerium target in the NFS experimental hall In the framework of an international collaboration led by Irfu/DPhN and IJCLab, an…
Speaking of the atom on the radio
Artist's view of the atom The question is “quite simple”: how quantum physics will complicate the approach to the atom and particularly its relation to the understanding of the electron? To…
Commissioning of the COeCO setup
The new experimental setup COeCO designed for the study of β-delayed conversion electrons emitted by neutron-rich nuclei produced by ALTO (Orsay), has recently been built, assembled and tested. The system…
GBAR on France Culture
The GBAR experiment at CERN (photo by David Lunney) How antimatter interacts with gravity is one of the key questions in physics which are simple enough to ask, but incredibly…
Dark Boson: New JEDI at Andromède for a first experiment
Photo of the New JEDI device at the end of the assembly stage, prior to its installation on the Andromède line The hall of the Andromède accelerator is in full…