Physicists to Meet at OSU to Discuss New Lab

PHYSICISTS TO MEET AT OHIO STATE TO DISCUSS NEW LABORATORY

     COLUMBUS -- More than 100 physicists from around the world
will meet at The Ohio State University at the end of July to
define the research program for a major new proposed physics
laboratory.

     This new facility is the key item in a long-range plan for
nuclear physics research prepared for the federal funding
agencies.  It is also at the top of the list for new facility
construction by the U.S. Department of Energy.

     The meeting, sponsored by the Argonne and Oak Ridge National
Laboratories and hosted by Ohio State, will focus on the "Isospin
Laboratory," a nuclear physics facility that will be able to
produce beams of short-lived, unstable nuclei. The proposed
project would be expected to cost about $150 million.

     Richard Boyd, professor of physics and associate dean of the
College of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Ohio State, said
more than 50 presentations will be given during the three-day
meeting (7/30 to 8/1) at the Fawcett Center for Tomorrow, 2400
Olentangy River Road.

     At the end of the meeting, a core group of physicists will
convene to draft a "white paper" for the Department of Energy
proposing uses of the new facility and directions for new
research.

     Boyd said the meeting is the latest in a progression that
began seven years ago as researchers sought to define the future
of nuclear physics.  While physicists have shown that more than
300 stable atomic nuclei exist -- and another 2,000 or so are
unstable but have been produced and studied -- there are several
thousand more that have been proposed by theoreticians, but which
have not yet been proven to exist.

     "The proposed new facility would play a major role in
allowing researchers to search for and study these nuclei," Boyd
said.  "It would allow nuclear physicists to study many new
nuclei that could not be made with any of the world's existing
facilities."

     Research at the new facility could play a major role in
understanding the processes that occur in the centers of stars,
and answer a host of questions as to how stars evolve and produce
a multitude of elements.  The studies also would extend nuclear
physics studies to a new realm, possibly leading to the discovery
of entirely new nuclear processes and phenomena in the areas of
nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics.

     As with other nuclear physics facilities, researchers would
aim a beam of particles at a dense target.  When particles in the
beam and target collide, researchers are able to study the
interactions that occur in the nucleus of the atoms.

     Boyd said this facility would differ from others in that the
"beam" is actually a secondary beam composed of short-lived
nuclei produced upstream by the interaction of an accelerated
primary beam of nuclei with a target that is chosen to create the
secondary beam of interest.  A second accelerator then creates
the energy of the secondary beam needed for the research, Boyd
said.

                             #

Contact:  Richard Boyd, (614) 292-2874.
Written by Earle Holland.


[Submitted by: Von Vargas  (vargas.12@osu.edu)
               
Tue, 22 Jul 1997 12:34:17 -0400 (EDT)]
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