How long do free neutrons live until they decay? This has been a hotly debated topic, because different measurement techniques lead to different results. A possible new solution has now been proposed: ...

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 ...

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

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 ...

Neutron stars are some of the weirdest cosmic objects, and the greatest mysteries lie deep in their hearts. Neutron stars' surface gravities are so intense that the largest "mountains" are only a few ...

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 ...

A research team at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) is the first ever to observe a beta-delayed neutron emission from fluorine-25, a rare, unstable nuclide. Using the FRIB Decay Station ...

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 ...

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 ...