Naturally occurring superheavy elements beyond those listed in the periodic table could potentially explain why asteroid 33 Polyhymnia is so dense, new research suggests. When you purchase through ...

Immediately after the Big Bang, before the first stars in the Universe ever formed, the Universe consisted of hydrogen (element #1), helium (element #2) and pretty much nothing else. Despite ...

Everything we can see and touch, and quite a lot that we can’t as well, is made of tiny particles called atoms. Some substances, like particles of this iron, contain only one kind of atom. Iron is an ...

Immediately after the Big Bang, before the first stars in the Universe ever formed, the Universe consisted of hydrogen (element #1), helium (element #2), and pretty much nothing else. Despite ...

For starters, elements 114 and 116 don't occur in nature. So don't look for them in your backyard. That's because they were made in a lab. Which may seem like cheating, but that's how it's done these ...

Transposable elements, or "jumping genes", were first identified by Barbara McClintock more than 50 years ago. Why are transposons so common in eukaryotes, and exactly what do they do? In addition, ...

So the periodic table has expanded again with the addition late last year of four new superheavy elements, bringing the known total up to 118. But the hunt for new elements started with efforts to ...

The story of the fifteenth element began in Hamburg, in 1669. The unsuccessful glassblower and alchemist Hennig Brandt was trying to find the philosopher’s stone, a mythical substance that could turn ...

On a stage in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization headquarters in Paris, Yuri Oganessian holds a microphone in one hand and a small remote control in the other. Over ...

Since their relatively recent appearance on the commercial scene, rare-earth magnets have made quite a splash in the public imagination. The amount of magnetic energy packed into these tiny, shiny ...

A handful of asteroids in our solar system are so dense that no element on Earth can explain their properties. Instead, they may be made of naturally occurring "superheavy elements" beyond those ...