How are the heaviest elements in the universe formed? Julia Even is leading research to uncover these processes.

Julia and her team developed and built an innovative experimental setup - the NEXT experiment, Neutron-rich, Exotic, heavy nuclei produced in multi-nucleon Transfer reactions - in which the AGOR cyclotron is used to accelerate a beam of ions to such a high speed that they can interact with the nuclei of particles in a thin metal foil. A small fraction of the accelerated ions undergoes a nuclear reaction which creates exotic nuclei that can otherwise only be found in environments like neutron star mergers.

The experiment aims to collect new information on the properties of very heavy atomic nuclei and search for new exotic nuclei and isotopes.

Learn more about this fascinating research? Read the article on 'making stardust in the lab'.