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 ...

Unstable atoms emit fast-moving particles that can damage cells in the human body. Some atoms are far more unstable than ...

New research has found that protons are about 20 times more likely to pair up with neutrons than with other protons in the nucleus. The result, based on the first-ever simultaneous measurement of such ...

According to the classical model of nuclear structure, the internal structure of nucleons should not change if they are bound into atomic nuclei. But it was discovered 35 years ago that quarks inside ...

The answer to the enduring question of the smallest thing in the universe has evolved along with humanity. People once thought grains of sand were the building blocks of what we see around us. Then ...

This lesson utilizes an adaptation of the board game Subatomic: An Atom Building Game to help students learn about the different parts that make up an atom. During their turn, players can choose to ...

For surfers, it's not enough just to wait for the right wave: they still have to know how to catch it. As it turns out, one challenge faced by surfers also applies to protons. An experiment recently ...

Physicists have known for decades that particles called gluons keep protons and neutrons intact—and thereby hold the universe together. Yet the details of how gluons function remain surprisingly ...

Physics Professor Manuel Calderón de la Barca Sánchez and his students are using the largest and most complex machine ever built to probe the strongest force in nature at the tiniest of scales. “In a ...

The formation of cosmic structure, on both large scales and small scales, is highly dependent on how dark matter and normal matter interact. Despite the indirect evidence for dark matter, we'd love to ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it. At a fundamental level, there is an equivalence between the mass of an ...