New insight into the behaviour of atomic nuclei may explain how gigantic star explosions, or supernovas, have formed the elements that are crucial to humankind. Ground-breaking research in nuclear ...

Elements heavier than iron, such as gold and uranium, are primarily formed through neutron capture processes, specifically the rapid neutron capture process (r-process). The r-process, unlike the ...

The universe was too hot for atoms to form immediately after the Big Bang. Hydrogen formed about 3 minutes after the Big Bang. Helium formed in smaller amounts than hydrogen. Neutral atoms formed ...

Astrophysicists are one step closer to understanding how the heaviest chemical elements are created in the universe, thanks to a camera designed and built at the University of Sheffield. Scientists ...

One of the great ongoing challenges of astrophysics, to find out how stars evolve and die, is to be tackled in an ambitious European research programme. This will involve studying in the laboratory ...

Inscribed on an Italian family’s 15th century coat of arms and decorating an ancient Japanese shrine, the Borromean rings are symbolically potent. Remove one ring from the trio of linked circles and ...

Most of the carbon and nitrogen in our bodies probably came from a planet the size of Mars crashing into Earth 4.4 billion years ago, scientists say. Researchers have long thought that these elements, ...

A new study has revealed that our understanding of the South Pole-Aitken basin was quite literally back-to-front, meaning ...

Around 3.5 billion years ago, life began to sprout on a fairly quiet, desolate planet we call Earth. Tracing the origins of life, and how molecules combined to create microbial life, is perhaps the ...

Even if early Earth had water and oxygen, the planet would still have needed another ingredient for life to flourish: heavy metals. Our cellphones, Earth’s core and even human metabolism would ...