PAN is a free week-long program for current high school students.

Online PAN: Both Michigan State University and the University of Notre Dame have cancelled in-person K-12 summer programs for 2020.

The Seminar will begin at 2pm EST Online Seminar featuring Benoit Cote (Konkoly Observatory)

Statistical estimates of nuclear reaction rates are essential ingredients for astrophysical model calculations, e.g. r-process nucleosynthesis in neutron star mergers, and nuclear applications, e.g. next generation nuclear reactor performance. Rate calculations require experimental or theoretical constraints for nuclear properties such as level densities (temperature), gamma-strength functions, particle optical potentials, and level spin distributions.

Please join us on July 8th 2020 from 1:00-3:00 EDT for an online symposium to honor the late pioneer Eleanor Margaret Burbidge. This event will celebrate her life and science through short talks from her colleagues and collaborators as well as researchers who have benefited from her trailblazing and scientific insights.

Speakers include:
 

Megan Donahue - Michigan State University and past president of AAS

George Fuller - University California, San Diego

Anneila Sargent - California Institute of Technology

This virtual workshop is organized within FA1 and consists of a series of 4 seminars. The purpose is to build and strengthen international collaborations in nuclear astrophysics issues related to stellar burning (broadly defined). The structure will take advantage of the online format, taking place for 2-hour sessions each week for four weeks. The first hour of each session will consist of three 20-minute talks, while the second hour will be an open discussion.

As the 2020 R-matrix workshop on methods and applications has been postponed until 2021, we have put together a condensed online meeting via zoom for interested participants. A broad range of topics will still be covered, including both experimental and theory endeavors related to R-matrix. The online workshop will take place on Monday June 22, from 12:00 to 15:00 EST. There will be three one-hour sessions that will consist of a series of five to six short 5-minute talks, starting at the top of each hour.

The Milky Way is surrounded by dozens of ultra-faint dwarf galaxies. These systems are the remnants of the earliest galaxies, and spectroscopy of their stars thereby reveals the elements produced by chemical evolution in a primitive, self-contained environment. Previous spectroscopic studies, however, had largely been limited to stars within the core of these galaxies (~2 half-light radii) due to the sparseness of their distant stars.

Start time: 10 am

Live stream details coming soon

In this activity, we'll combine 4 common ingredients in 3 different ways to make things to play with. Then we'll explore experiments that could help us make our new toys even more stretchy or bouncy.

You will need:

• Water
• Cornstarch
• Glue
• Borax
• Something to mix in (cup, bowl, baggie)
• Something to stir with (spoon, stick, hand)

Abstract:

The fusion reaction of carbon and helium to oxygen is the key to understanding the evolution of stars and the relative abundances of both elements. The reaction rate of ¹²C(a,g)¹⁶O has to be known with an uncertainty of lower than 10% at a center-of-mass energy of 300 keV during Helium burning conditions. So far, experiments have studied the reaction down to about 1 MeV.

The Seminar will begin at 2pm EST Online Seminar featuring Donna Dean (American Chemical Society).

Abstract:

In the second webinar, mentoring approaches will be addressed for both mentors and mentees.  Factors that may impact the mentoring relationship and key topics and questions for mentoring discussions will be covered.

The content of each webinar should help participants reflect on past experiences and understand how they can build and sustain more effective mentoring relationships in the future. 

The Seminar will begin at 2pm EST Online Seminar featuring Donna Dean (American Chemical Society).

Abstract:

The first webinar will focus on tools, techniques, and strategies to seek out appropriate mentors for strong mentoring relationships. . The do's and don'ts involved for mentees and mentors will be covered.  

The content of each webinar should help participants reflect on past experiences and understand how they can build and sustain more effective mentoring relationships in the future. 

This will be the tenth in a series of former JINA and now JINA-CEE meetings that brings together JINA-CEE participants, collaborators, and other interested researchers in nuclear physics, astronomy, and astrophysics to discuss progress and future directions related to the understanding of the origin of the elements and neutron stars.

Organizing Committee:

Sebastian Aguilar, University of Notre Dame

Rana Ezzeddine (University of Florida)

Abstract:

FRIB offers unprecedented opportunities in nuclear astrophysics to understand element synthesis and compact stellar objects. Close collaboration between nuclear scientists and astrophysicists will be essential to develop the early experiment proposals that maximize the impact on the field. JINA-CEE has identified a number of astrophysicists that are interested in contributing to proposal development and would be available to help or to collaborate with nuclear theorists and experimentalists.

We are organizing an international workshop on Nuclear Statistical Physics in Astrophysics and Nuclear Applications (NuSPANA). Nuclear reaction data is one of the key elements in nuclear applications ranging from simulating nucleosynthesis in stellar modeling to performance validation in nuclear energy and nuclear security. Experimental effort in the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) is focused on neutron-induced reactions, in close collaboration with reaction theory development and continuous progress on cross-section evaluations at LANL.

Each year units, departments and colleges across MSU’s campus participate in the Take Your Child to Work Day event. JINA will offer a short lesson about rare isotopes!

The periodic table organizes atoms into different elements, but the chart of nuclides is a better way to classify them. Discover the secrets of the nucleus by building a chart from towers of LEGO bricks, one for each of 130 isotopes in the first ten elements. The pattern of stable and radioactive nuclei will help explain the how the matter in your body was originally made in stars! Hosted by the Michigan History Museum and sponsored by the MSU Science Festival.

Abstract: Over the next decade, neutrino astronomy will probe the rich astrophysics of neutrino production in the sky, including neutrinos from the Sun, core-collapse supernova (e.g., SN 1987A), and relativistic jets (e.g., blazar TXS 0506+056). On the observational side of this new era, the Super-Kamiokande with Gadolinium, Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory, XENON, and future liquid scintillator neutrino experiments usher in a new generation of multi-purpose neutrino detectors designed to open new avenues for potentially observing currently undetected neutrinos.

The 8th annual MSU Science Festival will take place April 1-30, 2020. Presenters are getting ready to dazzle, delight, educate, and inform, reaching beyond science to include technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) and the important role they play shaping our future and everyday lives. The April 4 expo will feature dozens of booths, and JINA will be on hand to demonstrate nuclear astrophysics with hands-on activities!

Presented by Ermal Rrapaj from the University of Minnesota

Abstract: I study the flavor evolution of a dense neutrino gas by considering vacuum contributions, mat-ter effects and neutrino self-interactions. Assuming a system of two flavors in a uniform matter background, the time evolution of the many-body system in discretized momentum space is com-puted. The multi-angle neutrino-neutrino interactions are treated exactly and compared to both the single-angle approximation and mean field calculations.  I study various configurations of up to twenty neutrinos.