Astronomers have detected the first-ever signs of nuclear fission happening in stars, a discovery that sheds light on how elements heavier than those found naturally on Earth form in the cosmos. Until ...

Astronomers studying how elements heavier than iron were produced in the early Milky Way have identified a distinct series of epochs of galaxy-wide chemical formation. This evolutionary timeline, ...

Not all stars are created equally. Astronomers believe that the first stars to form after the Big Bang were mostly made of ...

Richard Feynman, a famous theoretical physicist who won the Nobel Prize, said that if he could pass on only one piece of scientific information to future generations, it would be that all things are ...

Researchers measured very precisely atomic masses of radioactive lanthanum isotopes and found an interesting feature in their nuclear binding energies. The discovery provides essential data for ...

Where did gold, uranium and other heavy elements come from — and what does that have to do with life on Earth? Scientists at LSU are helping to answer one of the biggest questions in modern ...

Scientists believe that many of the elements found in the Universe that are heavier than iron are created when stars merge or explosively die, but they are still unsure about the cosmic origin of ...

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 ...

A strange category of chemicals present in the early days of the solar system has mystified scientists for years—until now. These materials, called p-nuclei or proton-rich nuclei, are a rare group of ...

The overwhelming majority of the universe’s matter that we can see consists of hydrogen and helium. To create heavier elements, stars must do the heavy lifting of assembling their atomic nuclei.

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL–Floating 125,000 feet above the Antarctic ice sheet, a balloon-borne experiment is making an unprecendented second loop around the South Pole, probing the heavens for the origin ...

Astronomers have recently uncovered an extraordinary star, SDSS J0715-7334, which may be the most “pristine” object ever discovered. Located in the halo of the Large Magellanic Cloud, this star offers ...