In the air people breathe, the water on Earth, the stars in the sky and more, atoms are the building blocks that make up the ...

I read with great interest the article by Katherine Bourzac “Divining the Mysteries of the Atomic Nucleus” in the Jan. 29, 2024, issue of C&EN (page 30). Curious readers might like to know that an ...

Physicists have found a new “island of inversion” in the nucleus of molybdenum-84, a perfectly balanced atom with equal numbers of protons and neutrons. The discovery upends a decades-old assumption ...

For the first time, quarks and gluons were used to describe properties of atomic nuclei, which until now had been explained by the existence of protons and neutrons. The temporary pair of correlated ...

The study is part of Henna Kokkonen's doctoral thesis. Credit: Tommi Sassi For the first time in almost 30 years, the heaviest nucleus decaying via proton emission has been measured. The previous ...

Massive neutron stars colliding in space are thought to be able to create precious metals such as gold and platinum. The properties of these stars are still an enigma, but the answer may lie beneath ...

Smashing uranium-238 ions together proves to be a reliable way of imaging their nuclei. High-energy collision experiments reveal nuclear shapes that are strongly elongated and have no symmetry around ...

For the first time in more than thirty years, the heaviest nucleus decaying via proton emission has been measured. The previous similar breakthrough was achieved in 1996. The radioactive decay of ...

A team has succeeded in computing how atomic nuclei of the Calcium element behave in collisions with electrons. Results agree very well with available experimental data. For the first time, a ...