{"id":219547,"date":"2025-08-07T00:09:34","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T05:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/new-model-explains-plutoniums-peculiar-behavior"},"modified":"2025-08-07T00:09:34","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T05:09:34","slug":"new-model-explains-plutoniums-peculiar-behavior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/new-model-explains-plutoniums-peculiar-behavior","title":{"rendered":"New model explains plutonium\u2019s peculiar behavior"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-model-explains-plutoniums-peculiar-behavior.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Normally, materials expand when heated. Higher temperatures cause atoms to vibrate, bounce around and take up a larger volume. However, for one specific phase of plutonium\u2014called delta-plutonium\u2014the opposite inexplicably occurs: it shrinks above room temperature.<\/p>\n<p>As part of its national security mission, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) aims to predict the behavior of plutonium in all of its phases. Unraveling the mystery behind delta-plutonium\u2019s abnormal behavior at high temperatures is an important piece of the picture.<\/p>\n<p>In a new study, published in <a href=\"https:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.1088\/1361-6633\/adedb1\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Reports on Progress in Physics<\/i><\/a>, researchers from LLNL demonstrate a model that can reproduce and explain delta-plutonium\u2019s thermal behavior and unusual properties. The model calculates the material\u2019s free energy, a quantity that reflects the amount of available or useful energy in a system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Normally, materials expand when heated. Higher temperatures cause atoms to vibrate, bounce around and take up a larger volume. However, for one specific phase of plutonium\u2014called delta-plutonium\u2014the opposite inexplicably occurs: it shrinks above room temperature. As part of its national security mission, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) aims to predict the behavior of plutonium in [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1492],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}