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 ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. An abstract illustration of ...

Physicists working with molybdenum-84, a nucleus containing exactly 42 protons and 42 neutrons, have found that this seemingly balanced atom defies one of nuclear physics’ longest-standing ...

Abstract: Nuclear science fundamentally explores the formation of protons and neutrons from elementary particles and the interactions between them. One successful model describing this is the nuclear ...

Maria Goeppert Mayer was a physicist at Argonne who developed the nuclear shell model theory, a pivotal discovery that won her a Nobel Prize in 1963. This year marks the 75 th anniversary of the ...

Where does the periodic table of chemical elements end and which processes lead to the existence of heavy elements? Researchers report on experiments to come closer to an answer. They gained insight ...

A special set of numbers has formed the backbone of nuclear physics research for decades, and now we finally know how it arises from the quantum mix of nuclear particles and forces. Nearly 80 years ...