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.

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 ...

Researchers at CERN have made a great step forward in revealing how atomic nuclei behave after they mapped the edge of a mysterious ‘island of inversion’ where the standard rules of nuclear physics do ...

The atomic nucleus was discovered over a century ago ... the way in which these particles pack themselves together within it. In the classic nuclear shell model, protons and neutrons arrange ...