Physicists working with molybdenum-84, a nucleus containing exactly 42 protons and 42 neutrons, have found that this seemingly balanced atom defies one of nuclear physics’ longest-standing ...

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 ...

Physicists Maria Goeppert Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen develop a theory of the nucleus as composed of shells of protons and neutrons. It explains why nuclei with certain “magic numbers” of protons and ...