For three months in 2019, physicists blasted a beam of electrons at lead atoms that were held in place by foil made of diamond. The team was trying to determine the thickness of the neutron skin, the ...

Some atomic nuclei are thin-skinned — they’re surrounded by a slim shell of neutrons. Physicists now know how thick that neutron skin is for one particular type of nucleus. The skin of lead-208 — a ...

Physicists have measured the “skin” of an atom for the first time and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it is extremely thin. The measurement may help us understand the properties of neutron stars. Lead-208, ...

"For the first time, we see the creation of atoms; we can measure the temperature of the matter and see the microphysics in this remote explosion." When you purchase through links on our site, we may ...

A type of hydrogen that doesn't interact with light could explain how long neutrons live and reveal the identity of the universe's dark matter, according to a new theory. When you purchase through ...