Physicists have found a new “island of inversion” in the nucleus of molybdenum-84, a perfectly balanced atom with equal numbers of protons and neutrons. The discovery upends a decades-old assumption ...

Physicists working with molybdenum-84, a nucleus containing exactly 42 protons and 42 neutrons, have found that this seemingly balanced atom defies one of nuclear physics’ longest-standing ...

Maria Goeppert Mayer was a physicist at Argonne who developed the nuclear shell model theory, a pivotal discovery that won her a Nobel Prize in 1963. This year marks the 75 th anniversary of the ...

Physicists Maria Goeppert Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen develop a theory of the nucleus as composed of shells of protons and neutrons. It explains why nuclei with certain “magic numbers” of protons and ...