Atoms can be more overweight than we thought, a team of scientists in the United States has discovered. They have sent atoms crashing into one another in a particle accelerator to create bloated ...

Escaping elements are bombarded with neutrons, which split inside the nucleus into protons and electrons, generating new unique elements. Iron turns into gold, gold turns into lead, and so on ...

Iron represents the most stable configuration of protons and neutrons, combined, of any atomic nucleus yet discovered. At only element 26, however, it represents the end-of-the-line for most ...

So, how are elements heavier than iron formed? Most of these “heavy elements” are created by atomic nuclei capturing neutrons. There are two forms of this neutron capture process: the rapid ...

Nuclei with varying numbers of neutrons are called isotopes of an element. So, isotopes of iron include iron-54 with 26 protons and 28 neutrons, iron-56 with 26 protons and 30 neutrons ...

In an environment packed with excess energy (like a supernova), a small fraction of this energy may be used to bind free neutrons to iron atoms ... to produce a heavier element.

Even neutrons, which have no charge ... In fact, most of the elements heavier than iron found in the universe were created in supernovas. The team's findings could be put to practical use when ...

The team suggests that energetic photons generated by newly forming black holes or neutron stars transmute protons within ejected stellar material into neutrons, thereby providing ideal conditions for ...

Many heavier-than-iron elements form via the so-called r-process, where r refers to rapid neutron capture. This process occurs when two neutron stars merge, creating an abundance of free neutrons. In ...

Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow, killing several Iranian nuclear scientists. The facilities are heavily fortified and largely ...

Save guides, add subjects and pick up where you left off with your BBC account. We know that matter is made up of particles called atoms and that an element is a substance that is made up of only ...