*********************************
There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
*********************************
The nucleus is a level of organization of matter, giving a wide range of examples of finite quantum many-body effects from independent particle to Cooper pairs to collective rotations. I will have a few things to say about these issues that every physicist should be aware of, and a moral tale to tell.
But, it is in the domain of nuclear physics that one finds some of the reasons that WE are all here—the Hoyle state in 12C, that we are the ashes of supernovae explosions. And the nucleus is a laboratory for fundamental processes—the testing of the number of flavors in the Universe (as in quark flavors) via beta decay rates, the potential to establish the absolute mass scale of neutrinos via double beta decay. A few details of these issues will be sketched on the road to more quantum mechanical issues.
