When neutron stars merge, they create a powerful explosion called a kilonova that flings out neutron-rich material, some of ...

The gold in your jewelry and the uranium in nuclear power plants share a common and cataclysmic origin: they were born during collisions of neutron stars in what are called kilonovae. Until ...

Molecular compounds with heavy elements, like americium, curium and others can now be synthesized in a streamlined and efficient way thanks to a new technique developed by Lawrence Livermore National ...

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 ...

Use left and right arrow keys to seek audio. Scientists have for the first time observed the birth of a heavy element from the ruins of a collision between two neutron stars. Astronomers used ESO's ...

For the first time, astronomers have definitively ID’d a specific heavy element forged by a neutron star merger. Theories of physics have long predicted that about half of the universe’s heavy ...

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 ...