Latest press releases
Phantoms return from beyond the Moon with valuable data on cosmic radiation doses
8 December 2022
Together with the Orion spacecraft of the Artemis I mission, as part of the MARE experiment, two human phantoms equipped with numerous cosmic rays detectors are to land on Earth. The information gathered by the detectors will for the first time verify the knowledge, crucial for the presence of humans in deep space, of the effects of cosmic rays on the health of the astronauts who are to live and work in an environment devoid of the protective effects of our planet's magnetosphere.
‘Stretched’ nuclear states under the magnifying glass at the Cracow cyclotron
3 November 2022
All chemical elements were formed in the process of evolution of the Universe dominated by light atomic nuclei. The properties of these nuclei are therefore of crucial importance not only in astrophysics, but also in relation to our everyday life. Our knowledge of light atomic nuclei has just been expanded thanks to accelerator studies conducted in Cracow on the specific excited states of carbon-13 nuclei.
Fewer unknowns in the laser nanosynthesis of composites
31 August 2022
Composite particles with submicron sizes can be produced by irradiating a suspension of nanoparticles with a laser beam. Violent physical and chemical processes take place during irradiation, many of which have to date been poorly understood. Recently completed experiments, carried out at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow, have shed new light on some of these hitherto puzzles.
In search of universal laws of diffusion with resetting
4 August 2022
The manner in which animals penetrate a neighbourhood searching for food shows similarities to the movements of liquid particles in plant capillaries or gas molecules near an absorbing wall. These phenomena – and many others in nature – can be thought of as processes called anomalous diffusion with resetting. Recent research suggests that they have properties of a very universal nature.
Salutary delay in the reaction of crystal atoms to avalanche of photons
14 July 2022
Using X-ray laser pulses, the structure of matter can be studied with previously unprecedented accuracy. However, the pulses are so violent that they destroy the sample being irradiated. Notwithstanding, a Polish-Japanese team of physicists has just succeeded in demonstrating that atoms of the crystal under investigation react to an avalanche of photons with a certain delay. The discovery means that by using sufficiently short laser pulses, it will be possible to view an undisturbed structure of matter.