The formation of small worlds like Earth previously was thought to occur mostly around stars rich in heavy elements such as iron and silicon. However, new ground-based observations, combined with data ...

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 ...

Understanding the origin of heavy elements on the periodic table is one of the most challenging open problems in all of physics. In the search for conditions suitable for these elements via ...

Research by scientists in South Africa and India is shedding light on the nuclear processes that lead to the formation of heavy elements after the collision of neutron stars, and why those elements ...

For the first time, a freshly made heavy element, strontium, has been detected in space, in the aftermath of a merger of two neutron stars. This finding was observed by ESO’s X-shooter spectrograph on ...

An artist's illustration depicts how a rupture in the crust of a highly magnetized neutron star can trigger high-energy eruptions. - S. Wiessinger/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Astronomers have ...

For years, astronomers puzzled over the mystery of where the heaviest elements in the universe—like gold, uranium, and platinum—come from. Scientists understood that these elements had to form under ...

The elements above iron on the periodic table are thought to be created in cataclysmic explosions like the merger of two neutron stars or in rare classes of supernovae. New research suggests fission ...

In an ejection that would have caused its rotation to slow, a magnetar is depicted losing material into space in this artist’s concept. The magnetar’s strong, twisted magnetic field lines (shown in ...

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 ...

"It's pretty incredible to think that some of the heavy elements all around us, like the precious metals in our phones and computers, are produced in these crazy extreme environments." When you ...

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