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U.S. think tank: N. Korea operating lithium-6 plant for hydrogen bombs By Chang Jae-soon WASHINGTON, March 17 (Yonhap) -- North Korea is believed to have built and is operating a plant to produce lithium 6, a key ingredient for hydrogen bombs that are much more powerful than conventional nuclear weapons, a U.S. think tank claimed Friday. The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said the plant appears be located at the Hungnam Chemical Complex near Hamhung on the North's east coast. It cited a 2012 order the North placed in China to purchase large quantities of mercury and lithium...

Enlarge ImagePeer pressure. Magnetic domains in steel (vertical bans) arise when neighboring electrons point their magnetic poles in the same direction. Credit: Zureks, Chris Vardon/Wikimedia It would be tough to stick it to your refrigerator, but an ultra-cold gas magnetizes itself just as do metals such as iron or nickel, a team of atomic physicists reports. That cool trick shows that the messy physics within solids can be modeled with pristine gases, the researchers say. But others are skeptical that the team has actually seen what they claim. Condensed matter physicists can tell you essentially all there is to...

Using the very efficient UVES high-resolution spectrograph at the ESO VLT 8.2-m KUEYEN telescope, they have convincingly detected the presence of the rare isotope Lithium-6 (6Li; [2]) in this metal-rich, solar-type dwarf star that is also known to possess a planetary system, cf. ESO Press Release 13/00. Unlike the Lithium-7 (7Li) isotope of this light element, any primordial Lithium-6 would not survive the early evolutionary stages of a metal-rich solar-type star. The Lithium-6 now seen in HD 82943 must therefore have been added later, but from where? The astronomers believe that this observation strongly suggests that the star has at...