It's a knockout

摘要

Most of our knowledge about the quantum nature of the atomic nucleus comes from the study of nuclear reactions in which an energetic beam of one nuclear species is directed onto a target made of another. Writing in Physical Review Letters, Bazin and colleagues have now demonstrated that it is possible to knock two protons simultaneously out of a nucleus in the high-energy beam, while leaving the remaining nucleons (neutrons and protons) largely undisturbed. This observation of a so-called 'direct' reaction process offers a valuable tool to probe some of the most exotic regions of the nuclear chart.