Fundamental physics, as we’ve seen, finds itself in a difficult situation. Nothing unexpected has turned up at the Large Hadron Collider. We have phenomena like dark matter and dark energy that are ...

The number of protons + neutrons A = 4. If the number of neutrons N is 2 then there must be 4 - 2 = 2 protons. There are 2 protons in the helium nucleus. A helium atom has two electrons in an energy ...

Among atomic particles, the neutron seems the most aptly named: Unlike the positively charged proton or the negatively charged electron, neutrons have a charge of zero. But new experiments conducted ...

A new study suggests that the positively charged particles may have an outsize influence on the properties of neutron stars and other neutron-rich objects. Neutron stars are the smallest, densest ...

An element's atomic number defines it. An element with 17 protons will always be chlorine. However an element's mass numbers can vary, which means that it can have different numbers of neutrons. So ...