Elements heavier than iron, such as gold and uranium, are primarily formed through neutron capture processes, specifically the rapid neutron capture process (r-process). The r-process, unlike the ...

Astronomers have detected the first-ever signs of nuclear fission happening in stars, a discovery that sheds light on how elements heavier than those found naturally on Earth form in the cosmos ...

Chemistry in the first 50 million to 100 million years after the Big Bang may have been more active than we expected.

Ultimately, astronomers are undecided about how such elements are formed—in supernova explosions, which are relatively common, or in something rare and exotic, such as the merger of neutron stars.

Astronomers studying how elements heavier than iron were produced in the early Milky Way have identified a distinct series of epochs of galaxy-wide chemical formation. This evolutionary timeline ...

Stars formed of elements other than hydrogen would have different masses and evolutionary histories than normal hydrogen-rich stars.

But even the mass of a brown dwarf isn't enough to overcome the Coulomb barrier and start up stellar fusion. Fusion takes so much energy that some elements, up to the atomic mass of iron, are only ...

Our Universe is 13.8 billion years old, and our Sun formed about 2/3rds of the way through. Here's what came before it.

How the first stars formed from dust and gas has been a burning question for years, but a state-of-the-art computer simulation now offers the most detailed picture yet of how these first stars in ...