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Events on Friday, April 29th, 2016

Special Physics 208 Lecture
SHINE and Medical Radioisotopes
Time: 8:50 am - 9:40 am
Place: 2103 Chamberlin Hall
Speaker: Greg Piefer, SHINE Medical Technologies
Abstract: Greg Piefer founded SHINE Medical Technologies in 2010 and currently serves as the CEO of the company, which seeks to become the world leader in producing medical isotopes for diagnostic imaging of various conditions, including heart disease and cancer. SHINE’s revolutionary accelerator-based process allows for low-cost, environmentally friendly production of medical isotopes without a nuclear reactor. Dr. Pfiefer previously founded Phoenix Nuclear Labs, a company that has developed a new generation of high-yield neutron generators.
Host: Mark Rzchowski
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Physics Department Colloquium
When Magnetic Field Lines Break
Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Place: 2241 Chamberlin Hall (Coffee & Cookies at 3:15pm)
Speaker: Paul Cassak, West Virginia University
Abstract: Freshman physics tells us that magnetic field lines are not allowed to have free ends. However, counterintuitively, magnetic field lines are allowed to break! When this process occurs in high temperature plasmas, it is called magnetic reconnection. Rather than simply being a curiosity, it turns out to be a crucial phenomenon as it facilitates the conversion of magnetic energy into kinetic energy and heat of the surrounding plasmas. It is the mechanism behind the energy release in solar flares and coronal mass ejections, geomagnetic storms producing aurora, disruptive events in magnetically confined fusion plasmas, and in many astrophysical contexts. Consequently, understanding reconnection is a key aspect of both mitigating the harmful effects of space weather and the harnessing of essentially renewable energy through fusion. Studying reconnection was the motivation for the recently-launched NASA Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission. In this talk, results using theoretical techniques and a number of different supercomputer numerical simulations will be shown. Applications to the boundary of the region of influence of Earth’s magnetic field (the magnetosphere) and fusion will be discussed.
Host: Jan Egedal
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