How heavy can an element be? An international team of researchers has found that ancient stars were capable of producing elements with atomic masses greater than 260, heavier than any element on the ...

The overwhelming majority of the universe’s matter that we can see consists of hydrogen and helium. To create heavier elements, stars must do the heavy lifting of assembling their atomic nuclei.

The origin of heavy elements in our universe is theorized to be the result of neutron star collisions, which produce conditions hot and dense enough for free neutrons to merge with atomic nuclei and ...