In a groundbreaking achievement, physicists have successfully peered inside the nucleus of a molecule using electrons as a ...

Since the atomic nucleus was first proposed in 1911, physicists simply assumed it was round. But are the nuclei of atoms really round? Intuitively this shape makes sense and physicists believed it ...

QUESTION: Is an atom really hard to break? ANSWER: Not really — we can slice them, dice them, or smash them. Let me explain a little about an atom first, and you will know what I mean. The center of ...

Researchers have been able to initiate a controlled movement in the very heart of an atom. They caused the atomic nucleus to interact with one of the electrons in the outermost shells of the atom.

This image depicts the radium atom’s pear-shaped nucleus of protons and neutrons in the center, surrounded by a cloud of electrons (yellow), and an electron (yellow ball with arrow) that has a ...

A novel experiment has revealed a phenomenon called the Bohr–Weisskopf effect in a pear-shaped nucleus in a molecule for the ...

Famously sneaky particles have been caught behaving in a new way. For the first time, scientists have detected neutrinos scattering off the nucleus of an atom. The process, predicted more than four ...

Quantum mechanics explains why the electrons can keep spinning indefinitely. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. An atom is best ...

MIT scientists used radium monofluoride atom to observe electrons entering atomic nuclei, revealing new details of nuclear magnetism.

When most of us picture an atom, we think about a small nucleus made of protons and neutrons orbited by one or more electrons. We view these electrons as point-like while rapidly orbiting the nucleus.

Physicists in Finland have created a pumpkin-shaped atomic nucleus that throws off protons in a rare kind of radioactive decay. The nucleus, lutetium-149, has the shortest half-life of any of a group ...

Deep inside a mountain in central Italy, scientists are laying a trap for dark matter. The bait? A big metal tank full of 3.5 tons (3,200 kilograms) of pure liquid xenon. This noble gas is one of the ...