Megavolts Episode 2 - Building Bigger Elements

In Episode 2 of Megavolts series of videos from the Accelerator Control Room we speak with PhD student Lauren Bezzina about her research into fusion.

In Lauren’s experiments, she bombards targets made of heavy elements, like lead and tungsten, and turns them into an even heavier element – thorium.

Her challenge is to capture the products of these experiments and piece together the parts of the puzzle to understand better how nuclei are put together. The results will give us insights into how to create superheavy elements – elements we’ve never seen before on earth – and add them to the periodic table.

For more behind the scenes info about HIAF – the Heavy-Ion Accelerator Facility – and the Department of Nuclear Physics and Accelerator Applications, visit our online tour. It features 360 degree photos, popups with interesting details, and students and staff dropping in to explain what you’re looking at.

Contact

Ms Lauren Bezzina
E: lbezzina@phys.ethz.ch
T: (02)61252083

Megavolts Episode 1 - What goes on inside the Accelerator

This is the first of the Megavolts series of videos, from the Accelerator Control Room. In this episode Dr Phil Dooley speaks with Dr Annette Berriman about the experiments going on at that moment – smashing lithium-7 into a gold target. The discussion ranges from how lithium is a weird shape,...

Megavolts Episode 9: When fusion almost works

In the latest episode of MegaVolts we talk about fusion and when it fails. It’s a grey area – sometimes colliding nuclei miss, sometimes they bounce and sometimes they stick for a little while, dance around each other and then go their separate ways, both somehow changed forever… Getting...

Megavolts Episode 4 - The Search for Dark Matter

Episode 4 of Megavolts finds us in the HIAF experimental hall looking for dark matter with Dr Lindsey Bignell. Actually, it’s a practice run, using neutrons instead: dark matter detections are likely to be so rare that we need to have the detectors well and truly tested before we begin live...

Megavolts Episode 12: Testing dark matter detector purity

The challenge with detecting dark matter is that the signal will probably be incredibly small – perhaps only a couple of particles per day. So it would be really easy to be fooled by some other signal, such as lead-210, which is radioactive. Dr Anton Wallner is testing the crystals that will be used...

Research School of Physics