Physicists have measured the energy associated with the decay of a metastable state of the thorium-229 nucleus. This is a significant step on the way to a nuclear clock which will be far more precise than the best of today’s atomic timekeepers.

As part of the International Year of the Periodic Table 2019, the Conference on the Chemistry and Physics of Heavy Elements (TAN) taking place in Wilhelmshaven, Germany from the 25th to the 30th of August, brought together the discoverers of new chemical elements in a unique historical gathering. Researchers from Germany, Russia and Japan, who have added new elements to the periodic table in recent years, met at the international congress.

They are among the hottest moments in cosmic events: the collisions of neutron stars in the universe, in which chemical elements are formed. With particle collisions in the accelerator scientists are able to create similar conditions at the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung and the future FAIR accelerator center. Now, an international group of researchers at the HADES collaboration has succeeded for the first time in measuring the thermal electromagnetic radiation – the so-called...

At 150 years of age, every chemistry lesson still must have it: the periodic table of the elements. The table organizes all substances in the universe according to their atomic masses and chemical properties. The United Nations has declared 2019 to be the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements. For this occasion, GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung and the Darmstadtium Science and Congress Center have published a periodic table as educational material for...

It is a significant moment for the FAIR-Project: A new partner comes aboard. The FAIR international laboratory welcomes the Czech Republic as new partner state. The Czech Republic joins FAIR as an “Aspirant Partner”, a new type of participation which the FAIR Council, the shareholders' meeting of FAIR GmbH, has created in 2017 to offer new countries interested in being part of FAIR a progressive path to membership.

A total of 57 girls from grades 5 through 9 had the opportunity to find out about the work at FAIR and GSI on Thursday, 28 March 2019. They took advantage of the nation-wide Girls’Day to gain an insight into the many activities that are pursued at an international research institution, especially in professions where women have seldom been represented so far. With this number, the organizers broke the previous record of participants.

It is a new high-quality offer for international young scientists and at the same time a further important step for cosmic radiation research: The European Space Agency (ESA) and the international accelerator center FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research), which is currently being built at GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, will establish a joint Summer School for Radiation Research.

When exactly does a newly created element really exist? What requirements must be fulfilled for its measurement to be recognized and for the element to be added to the periodic table of chemical elements? And in the case of several claims, to whom is the discovery attributed, and thus the right to name it? In order to answer these questions, the criteria for element discovery have been revised and published in a preliminary report.

The option to measure the gravitational waves of two merging neutron stars has offered the chance to answer some of the fundamental questions about the structure of matter. At the extremely high temperatures and densities in the merger scientists conjecture a phase-transition where neutrons dissolve into their constituents: quarks and gluons. In the current issue of Physical Review Letters, two international research groups report on their calculations of what the signature of such a phase...