Computing the physics that links nuclear structure, element formation, and the life and death of stars

The Big Bang began the formation and organization of the matter that makes up ourselves and our world. Nearly 14 billion years later, nuclear physicists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and their partners are using America’s most powerful supercomputers to characterize the behavior of objects, from subatomic neutrons to neutron stars, that differ dramatically in size yet are closely connected by physics.