How to Boil a Nucleus
By Vic Viola, Kris Kwiatkowski
Striving to understand the nuclear "liquid" formed in the core of a neutron star, experimenters use "soft explosions" to induce phase transitions in atomic nuclei
This Article From Issue
September-October 1998
Volume 86, Number 5
Page 449
DOI: 10.1511/1998.37.449
The explosion of a supernova, a dying star, is an event of exceptional violence; it is the only phenomenon thought to be powerful enough to fuse atomic nuclei into heavy elements from iron up to uranium. During the catastrophic collapse of stellar material in a supernova's core, gaseous nuclear matter is believed to condense to the liquid phase.
Photograph courtesy of Vic Viola and Kris Kwiatkowski.
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