Gold, uranium, and other heavy elements on Earth did not form here. They were born in the violent deaths of massive stars and the collisions of neutron stars, traveling across the galaxy before ...

Some classes of stars create light elements, such as oxygen and silicon; others also craft heavier ones, such as iron and nickel. Once a star dies, it spews out these materials to be incorporated into ...

A surprising new study reveals that the first stars appeared in a pre-heated universe, challenging earlier ideas about early cosmic conditions.

A new article published in The Astrophysical Journal explores a new theory of how Type Ia supernovae, the powerful stellar explosions that astronomers use to measure distances across the universe, ...

Chemistry in the first 50 million to 100 million years after the Big Bang may have been more active than we expected.

At just 25, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin applied quantum physics to a treasure trove of astronomical observations to show that stars are mostly hydrogen and helium.

A recent Physical Review Letters study presents a new model for quark star merger ejecta that could resolve whether these cosmic collisions generate ordinary matter or something different.

Researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory studied a nuclear reaction and measured conditions that can explain how heavy elements are formed inside stars. Stars are mainly composed of light ...

Kurt’s first attempt to create his own Star Wars droid–and the incredible journey that hobby would take him on–almost came to an end right there, before it even started. All because a saw blade caught ...