Posted on by Evan Gough

Nature’s Ultra-Rare Isotopes Can’t Hide from this New Particle Accelerator

The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at the University of Michigan will study rare isotopes that last only fractions of a second. Image Credit: FRIB/University of Michigan.

A new particle accelerator at Michigan State University is producing long-awaited results. It’s called the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, and it was completed in January 2022. Researchers have published the first results from the linear accelerator in the journal Physics Review Letters.

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Posted on by Evan Gough

The Universe is Constantly Bathing you in Radiation. Incredibly, This Could be Used for Medical Diagnosis

A cluster of massive stars seen with the Hubble Space Telescope. The cluster is surrounded by clouds of interstellar gas and dust called a nebula. The nebula, located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina, contains the central cluster of huge, hot stars, called NGC 3603. Recent research shows that galactic cosmic rays flowing into our solar system originate in clusters like these. Credits: NASA/U. Virginia/INAF, Bologna, Italy/USRA/Ames/STScI/AURA

Walk into any modern hospital, and you’ll find a medical imaging department. Medical imaging uses x-rays, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and other arcane-sounding methods like positron emission tomography (PET) to image the body’s interior for analysis and diagnosis. To a non-specialist, these techniques can sound almost otherwordly. But in one way or another, these technologies rely on natural phenomena, including radiation, to do their thing.

Now a new study suggests that the Universe’s naturally occurring radiation could be used in medical imaging and could be particularly useful when it comes to COVID-19. The type of radiation in question is cosmic rays.

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