The creation of the lightest uranium atom ever gives scientists a better understanding of a fundamental type of radioactive decay. All elements have one or more isotopes, which differ from each other ...

A tiny vial of gray powder produced at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the backbone of a new experiment to study the intense magnetic fields created in nuclear collisions.

Lead-208 will probably last forever, while the synthetic isotope technetium-99 exists for just hours. The difference lies in the structure of the atom's nucleus, with certain "magic numbers" of ...