Neutrons are among the basic building blocks of matter. As long as they are part of a stable atomic nucleus, they can stay there for arbitrary periods of time. However, the situation is different for ...

A free neutron outside a nucleus is not stable. It undergoes beta decay at a probability. Over time, the number of free neutrons decreases exponentially at a time constant, which is called the neutron ...

A new "bathtub" experiment has allowed physicists to measure the lifetime of a free neutron far more precisely than ever before. The breakthrough could help probe the fringes of the Standard Model of ...

The neutron-rich oxygen isotopes oxygen-27 and oxygen-28 exist as very short-lived resonances, report scientists based on the first observation of their decay into oxygen-24 and three and four ...

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 ...

Scientists have found evidence of alpha particles at the surface of neutron-rich heavy nuclei, providing new insights into the structure of neutron stars, as well as the process of alpha decay.

The creation of the lightest uranium atom ever gives scientists a better understanding of a fundamental type of radioactive decay. All elements have one or more isotopes, which differ from each other ...

When physicists strip neutrons from atomic nuclei, put them in a bottle, then count how many remain there after some time, they infer that neutrons radioactively decay in 14 minutes and 39 seconds, on ...

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 ...

"We studied the last several orbits before the merger, when the entwined magnetic fields undergo rapid and dramatic changes, ...