A New Visualization of the Atomic Nucleus

 

A pair of physicists from MIT and Jefferson Lab and an animator have created a new visualization of the atomic nucleaus.

For the first time, the sizes, shapes and structures of nuclei in the quantum realm are visualized using animations and explained in the video, kottke.org.

The video also establishes what appears to be a new unit of measure with an adorable name, the babysecond:

To better define the velocities of particles at such small distance scales, we establish the baby second as 10^-23 seconds. A photon moving at the speed of light crosses three femtometers (a bit more than the radius of oxygen-16) in one baby second.