Some Nobel Prize-winning ideas originate in strange places, but still go on to revolutionize the scientific field. George de Hevesy’s research on radioactive tracers is one such example.
To detect dark matter, you need to build an ultra-sensitive detector and put it somewhere ultra-quiet. For one physics collaboration, that place is almost a mile under Lead, S.D.
Should the capsule not be found immediately, we can’t just write it off as lost. A long term system of monitoring is needed to protect humans and the environment.
A new particle accelerator has just begun operation. It is the most powerful accelerator of its kind on Earth and will allow physicists to study some of the rarest matter in the universe.
Trouble may arise if the operating reactor is shut down, with risks ranging from a used fuel meltdown to a reactor core explosion.
Much of the region around Chernobyl has been untouched by people since the nuclear disaster in 1986.
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With Russian troops rolling through the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine, a biologist who studies wildlife in the area describes the risks of disturbing this radioactive landscape.
A protest against dumping nuclear waste in South Australia in 2015.
AAP Image/ Warwick Goodman
Radioactive waste from nuclear medicine facilities will be trucked to and buried near the South Australian town of Kimba. But this decision still faces a range of hurdles.
Chien-Shiung Wu’s experiments were instrumental in supporting some of the biggest 20th-century theories in physics.
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Alongside their famous dangers, radioactive materials have many beneficial uses. With as many more predicted as have already been discovered, nuclear physicists are searching for more isotopes.
A police officer stands next to a rubbish bin that has been cordoned off in Salisbury, Britain, 05 July 2018.
RICK FINDLER/EPA
Former Russian spies Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal were both poisoned – one polonium, the other by Novichok. Now that there’s been another nerve agent case, what’s the difference?