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 ...

How are heavy elements formed in the universe? Extremely neutron-rich atomic nuclei and their beta-decay rates play an ...

For much of the twentieth century, scientists believed that the heaviest naturally occurring elements formed primarily inside stars. Over the past two decades, astronomical observations and laboratory ...

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 ...

All around us are elements forged in stars, from the nickel and copper in coins to the gold and silver in jewelry. Scientists have a good understanding of how these elements form: In many cases, a ...

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 ...

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 ...