The formation of small worlds like Earth previously was thought to occur mostly around stars rich in heavy elements such as iron and silicon. However, new ground-based observations, combined with data ...

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 ...

A recently detected flash of energy appears to have emanated from the wreckage of colliding galaxies, according to an international team of astronomers led by Penn State scientists. The burst, known ...

As massive stars collapse into black holes, powerful jets tearing out from their hearts may "dissolve" the stars' outer layers, providing the ingredients to make heavy elements. This is the conclusion ...

Alpha particles, as the nuclei of the helium atom are also called, play a decisive role in the formation of heavier elements. Carbon, for instance, is formed from the fusion of these alpha particles.

Research by scientists in South Africa and India is shedding light on the nuclear processes that lead to the formation of heavy elements after the collision of neutron stars, and why those elements ...

Models for how heavy elements are produced within stars have become more accurate thanks to measurements by RIKEN nuclear physicists of the probabilities that 20 neutron-rich nuclei will shed neutrons ...

How heavy can an element be? An international team of researchers has found that ancient stars were capable of producing elements with atomic masses greater than 260, heavier than any element on the ...

In an ejection that would have caused its rotation to slow, a magnetar is depicted losing material into space in this artist’s concept. The magnetar’s strong, twisted magnetic field lines (shown in ...

For years, astronomers puzzled over the mystery of where the heaviest elements in the universe—like gold, uranium, and platinum—come from. Scientists understood that these elements had to form under ...

The elements above iron on the periodic table are thought to be created in cataclysmic explosions like the merger of two neutron stars or in rare classes of supernovae. New research suggests fission ...