Why do some elements decay in minutes, while others last billions of years? Certain "magic numbers" of nuclear particles may ...

Everything we can see and touch, and quite a lot that we can’t as well, is made of tiny particles called atoms. Some substances, like particles of this iron, contain only one kind of atom. Iron is an ...

WASHINGTON -- Five years of preparation, eight months collecting a few drops of precious radioactive material from a nuclear reactor in Tennessee, five trans-Atlantic flights, millions in research ...

A chemical bond between a superheavy element and a carbon atom has been established for the first time. This research opens new vistas for studying the effects of Einstein's relativity on the ...

Measurements of an artificial radioactive element called lawrencium could revive an arcane controversy over the element’s position in the periodic table — and the structure of the table itself. An ...

Last summer, when more than 8 million trillion calcium ions blasted a thin film of americium atoms nonstop for more than a month, the collisions generated four atoms of never-before-seen element 115, ...

Creating a superheavy element is no easy feat. It's the equivalent of firing six trillion bullets a second at a needle in a haystack, hoping the bullet and needle somehow fuse together, then catching ...