An international team of researchers recently measured the lifetime of a neutron outside of an atomic nucleus with extraordinary precision. By their measurements, the neutron survived for 14.629 ...

Understanding the origin of heavy elements on the periodic table is one of the most challenging open problems in all of physics. In the search for conditions suitable for these elements via ...

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff.--Carl Sagan Almost all ...

Elements that do not exist in nature—that have been created in a laboratory—are unstable. After hours or days of one element bombarding another with enough energy for both to fuse, the resulting new ...

Measurements on neutron-rich nuclei help to refine models of how heavy elements came into existence Models for how heavy elements are produced within stars have become more accurate thanks to ...

New research has enhanced scientists' understanding of how free neutrons decay into other particles. The work provides the first measurement of the energy spectrum of the photons that are released in ...

HEISENBERG has discussed the hypothesis that the nucleus of an atom is composed of neutrons and protons only, the neutron being regarded as a fundamental entity and not as a combination of an electron ...