Since the discovery of radioactivity in the 19th century, humanity has been forced to reckon with an uncomfortable but sobering truth: much of the matter we find today will eventually decay away. This ...

How long does a free neutron really live before it decays? This simple question has annoyed physicists for decades. Moreover, when they searched for an answer, they found not one but two confusing ...

A neutron decays into a proton, an electron, and an antineutrino. In the QCD lattice approach, a discrete space is used for the calculation. The different colours on the lattice represent the gluons ...

Researchers have observed a rare nuclear decay. Namely, the team measured low-kinetic-energy protons emitted after the beta decay of a neutron-rich nucleus beryllium-11. Researchers from the National ...

An international team of researchers recently measured the lifetime of a neutron outside of an atomic nucleus with extraordinary precision. By their measurements, the neutron survived for 14.629 ...

Radioactive decay is the strange and almost mystical ability for one element to naturally and spontaneously transmute into another. In the process, those elements tend to emit deadly forms of ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — Examining the smallest parts of the universe often takes the biggest kinds of equipment. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a unique piece of equipment the size of a building is ...

AT SOME point in our lives, most of us learn that atoms are comprised of three types of particle: neutrons, protons and electrons. Each has distinct properties. The electron and proton have opposite ...