NASA’s Juno spacecraft has forced planetary scientists to rethink what lies at the center of Jupiter. Instead of the dense, compact ball of rock and ice that textbooks long assumed, new interior ...

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 ...

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 ...

A dim star orbiting the Milky Way is drawing attention for its almost pristine composition. Named PicII-503, it contains barely any heavy elements, making it one of the most extreme examples of an ...

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 ...