Inside the nucleus of some atoms, protons appear to be doing very unexpected things. They are pairing up far more often than usual when they get extremely close to each other, and physicists don’t ...

Matter looks calm and solid, but its atoms hold immense energy locked inside tiny nuclei. That hidden reserve rarely escapes ...

Note: This video is designed to help the teacher better understand the lesson and is NOT intended to be shown to students. It includes observations and conclusions that students are meant to make on ...

The word magic is not often used in the context of science. But in the early 1930s, scientists discovered that some atomic nuclei—the center part of atoms, which make up all matter—were more stable ...

One of nature's simplest elements is giving scientists a big headache after new research shows that protons and neutrons in helium atoms are not behaving as theory suggests they should. The mismatch ...

A new measurement of the strong nuclear force, which binds protons and neutrons together, confirms previous hints of an uncomfortable truth: We still don’t have a solid theoretical grasp of even the ...

A research team has achieved a significant breakthrough in determining fundamental properties of atomic nuclei. The team conducted laser spectroscopy experiments on muonic helium-3. Muonic helium-3 is ...

Physicists have found the strongest sign yet of a fabled four of a kind. For six decades, researchers have hunted for clusters of four neutrons called tetraneutrons. But evidence for their existence ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. A new measurement of the strong nuclear force, which binds protons and neutrons together, confirms previous hints of an uncomfortable ...