An experiment carried out at CERN's ISOLDE facility has determined the western shore of a small island of atomic nuclei, where conventional nuclear rules break down. The atomic nucleus was discovered ...

The past three decades have witnessed the emergence of exotic structures and dynamics in weakly bound unstable nuclei located in the rapidly expanding nuclear chart. Examples include halo and cluster ...

For the first time, physicists have developed a model that explains the origins of unusually stable magic nuclei based directly on the interactions between their protons and neutrons. Published in ...

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 ...

The atomic nucleus is a complex quantum many-body system characterized by regularities: “magic numbers”, i.e., numbers of nucleons (proton or neutron) for which nuclei are particularly stable. This ...

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Scientists have managed to uncover a new magic number that could help us rethink and redefine the origins of everything that exists in our Universe. A team of physicists at the Institute of Modern ...

Through mass measurements of silicon-22 combined with theoretical calculations, researchers have revealed that silicon-22 possesses a double-magic structure similar to that of oxygen-22, while also ...