Lecturer: Prof. Michael Paul
Affiliation: Racah Institute of Physics,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Abstract:
Stars synthesize all elements found in Nature,
other than the very light relics of the Big
Bang. The stable isotopes of these elements
are forever but stars also produce nuclides,
short-lived on a Galactic time scale (half-lives
<^~100 My), that carry a time information on
the evolution of astrophysical or geophysical
events. Over the last two decades,
sophisticated experimental techniques of
gamma and mass spectrometry have been
developed to trace and study these nuclides.
Among them, ⁴⁴Ti, ⁶⁰Fe, ¹⁴⁶Sm, ²⁴⁴Pu open
time windows a few hundred years to a few
hundred million years wide into the history of
our Galactic neighborhood: the last
supernova remnant known in the Milky Way,
possible terrestrial imprints of supernovae a
few million years old, archaeometry in the
Early Solar System and the mystery of heavy-
element synthesis.