Secret Physics

We are a university lab and so we rarely do work specifically for any government entity. There is the odd experiment for NASA where they want to know the effect individual medium-energy heavy ions can have on things, and we are very well setup to do those. But to address a common misconception, we don't work on bombs or anything related to bombs. We may be said to work on things that are related to things that are related to nuclear weapons, but we are in nuclear physics after all, and as we all know you are probably only five degrees away from Kevin Bacon. So hopefully we can be cut a little slack for that.

This is all to say that unlike Los Alamos National Lab or Lawrence Livermore, we don't have any classified materials. You might think that this would make blogging easier, but it's not so simple. We are still stuck with the fact that the most interesting thing going on right now is probably not yet published. This means in many cases that we haven't yet decided on the final version of what the result is. And even speaking generally about the result can cause BIG problems.

The Magnesium-40 discovery is one example of this. I got to participate in this and I must say it’s so exciting to be involved in this experiment from beginning to end, to see all the tweaks, plans, test experiments and hard decisions finally produce something never before seen. It will be interesting to see how the theorists eventually deal with the fact that Magnesium-40, Aluminum-42 and Aluminum-43 are apparently bound and what consequences this has for the boundaries of our scientific knowledge going forward. That said, we were not supposed to discuss the discovery with the outside world until just before the Nature article was published this past week. So unfortunately, in this and similar situations, the blog readers will miss out on a lot of the raw excitement of our work. If you want the raw stuff, I guess you just have to be here. Applications for grads starting next year are still open. :)

Then there's the exciting new experiment coming up, where we plan to use the innovative technique that was first thought of here. Well, while we are somewhat singular in our capability within the United States, there are other laboratories in the world that might be in a position to scoop us. So we don't want to spill the beans on that one either.

In the interests of full disclosure I have now shattered your idealistic notions that you are getting an unobstructed view right into the innards of the lab. Hopefully you will not be too disappointed to still read the blog. I really should write something about the magnesium-40 experiment, but while you're waiting you can always check out a few of the other popular reports:

http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20077102806...
http://newsbulletin.msu.edu/2007-10-25/NSCL.html
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=110510&org=PHY&from=home

And those of you with a subscription can check out the article, entitled ‘Discovery of 40Mg and 42Al suggests neutron drip-line slant towards heavier isotopes,’ in the October 25th issue of the journal Nature.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v449/n7165/full/nature06213.html

If you feel cheated because you thought from the title that you would get to hear about some actually secret physics, then perhaps you should give some suggestion for what secret physics you would like to hear about and I'll see what I can do.