Emmanuel CLEMENT

28, Physicist



Grand Accélérateur National d’Ions Lourds (GANIL)



CEA-DSM/CNRS-IN2P3



Is the nucleus grapefruit-shaped or lemon-shaped?

 

The best of current technological advances will one day become available on the market.
I have always found nuclear physics interesting. Measuring the deformation of an element which has a size of one millionth of a billionth of a meter, trying to determine whether it is grapefruit-shaped or lemon-shaped, is fascinating! We measure something that nobody but us will ever see. The interaction between two nuclei causes them to rotate and emit light. However, for that purpose, we need an accelerator. I work on radioactive nuclei and, here again, only GANIL, along with CERN [Centre Européen de Recherche Nucléaire] permits such experiments. It is a privilege for me to be able to carry out such research. Thanks to GANIL, we may find something revolutionary someday. For instance, look at the three w's of your web page, which stand for “world wide web”: it is at CERN that they were born and were used to manage the flow of astronomy data. Today, this technological advance has been transferred to the general public. When a new accelerator is built, new technological developments are pushed well beyond what exists today, and the best of it might someday reach the market.

Image copyright: F.CASTEL