The journey of the elements starts in the earliest moments of the Big Bang, when our universe was only a few seconds to a few minutes old. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an ...

"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff."—Carl Sagan Almost ...

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 ...

What makes oxygen oxygen and not, say, iron is not what these two elements are made of—both kinds of atoms have nuclei made of protons and neutrons, with a surrounding cloud of electrons. It’s how ...

Earlier this year, researchers found the signal of inflation hidden in the cosmic microwave background—the radiative remnants of the Big Bang took a long time to reveal their secrets. It was a big day ...

When radiochemist Jennifer Shusterman and her colleagues got the first results of their experiment, no one expected what they saw: Atoms of a weird version of the element zirconium had ...