A recently detected flash of energy appears to have emanated from the wreckage of colliding galaxies, according to an international team of astronomers led by Penn State scientists. The burst, known ...

Planets form more commonly in star systems with relatively high concentrations of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, a new study suggests. Such heavier elements are necessary to form the dust ...

The plutonium-244 hints at how heavy metals form in stars. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. A rare version of the radioactive ...

A fleet of NASA space telescopes has traced a brief flash of gamma rays to a likely collision between two neutron stars, placing the violent event inside a tiny, gas-shrouded galaxy that had escaped ...

Although a definitive answer to the question has yet to be provided, an investigation, published in the journal Science and led by physicists at the Australian National University (ANU), represents ...

Scientists know that elements lighter than iron are typically forged deep in the core of stars. The extremely high temperature in the core of stars can fuse protons allowing them to be smashed ...

How heavy can an element be? An international team of researchers has found that ancient stars were capable of producing elements with atomic masses greater than 260, heavier than any element on the ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Dec. 7, 2023 — The elements above iron on the periodic table are thought to be created in cataclysmic explosions like the merger of two neutron stars or in rare classes of supernovae ...

For the first time, a freshly made heavy element, strontium, has been detected in space, in the aftermath of a merger of two neutron stars. This finding was observed by ESO’s X-shooter spectrograph on ...