Smashing atomic nuclei together reveals their elusive shapes

A new imaging method takes snapshots of atomic nuclei smashing together in high-energy collisions to help physicists better understand their shapes. Nuclei can take on a variety of forms, which can be tricky to predict: some are rigid and some fluctuate between several. The new method tracks the momentum of thousands of particles that result from collisions and matches the results with models to “roll back the clock to infer the shape of the nuclei”, says physicist Jiangyong Jia.