As SNS celebrates two decades of discovery, its story is far from complete. Building on the foundation of reliability, power and innovation established by the First Target Station, the Second Target ...

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 ...

Mirror magic: The "cores" of the exotic nuclei oxygen-22 and silicon-22 both resemble that of oxygen-16, with eight protons and eight neutrons. The neutron-rich oxygen isotope contains an additional ...

For four years, James Chadwick was a prisoner of war in Germany. When World War I ended, he returned to his native England to rejoin the mentor of his undergraduate days, Ernest Rutherford. Now head ...

Physicists have discovered a surprising new “Island of Inversion” in a place no one expected: among nuclei where the number of protons equals the number of neutrons. For decades, these strange regions ...

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." In 1911, New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford theorized that atoms contained a nucleus, and in the ...

For the first time, quarks and gluons were used to describe properties of atomic nuclei, which until now had been explained by the existence of protons and neutrons. The temporary pair of correlated ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. The linear accelerator at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, where researchers study rare isotopes of elements. Facility for ...

Interactive version: Twenty years of discovery science at ORNL's Spallation Neutron Source On a clear April day in 2006, a team of engineers and scientists erupted with excitement from the control ...