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 ...

The study is part of Henna Kokkonen's doctoral thesis. Credit: Tommi Sassi For the first time in almost 30 years, the heaviest nucleus decaying via proton emission has been measured. The previous ...

For the first time, the state of an atomic nucleus was switched with a laser. For decades, physicists have been looking for such a nuclear transition -- now it has been found. This opens up a new ...

A new milestone in nuclear physics has been achieved with the direct observation of three different deformations in the atomic nucleus of lead-190 (190Pb). These deformations, associated with three ...

As well as being useful for creating an optical ion clock, this multi-ion capability could also be exploited to create quantum-computing architectures based on multiple trapped ions. And because the ...

Since the atomic nucleus was first proposed in 1911, physicists simply assumed it was round. But are the nuclei of atoms really round? Intuitively this shape makes sense and physicists believed it ...

Smashing uranium-238 ions together proves to be a reliable way of imaging their nuclei. High-energy collision experiments reveal nuclear shapes that are strongly elongated and have no symmetry around ...

For years, physicists have mapped the stability of atomic nuclei with remarkable confidence. The periodic table, with its neat rows and columns, hides a more chaotic reality underneath, where protons ...

Scientists have taken another giant step towards building the most precise clock ever imagined—one that could display not only the passage of time, but shifting rules of nature itself. An ...

Scientists at Delft University of Technology have managed to watch a single atomic nucleus flip its magnetic state in real time. Using a scanning tunneling microscope, they indirectly read the nucleus ...