  The neutron rich exotic unbound 7He nucleus has been the subject of many
experimental investigations. While the ground-state 3/2- resonance is well
established, there is a controversy concerning the excited 1/2- resonance
reported in some experiments as low-lying and narrow (E_R ~ 1 MeV, Gamma < 1
MeV) while in others as very broad and located at a higher energy. This issue
cannot be addressed by ab initio theoretical calculations based on traditional
bound-state methods. We introduce a new unified approach to nuclear bound and
continuum states based on the coupling of the no-core shell model, a
bound-state technique, with the no-core shell model/resonating group method, a
nuclear scattering technique. Our calculations describe the ground-state
resonance in agreement with experiment and, at the same time, predict a broad
1/2- resonance above 2 MeV.
