New research has enhanced scientists' understanding of how free neutrons decay into other particles. The work provides the first measurement of the energy spectrum of the photons that are released in ...

The fact that the neutron is slightly more massive than the proton is the reason why atomic nuclei have exactly those properties that make our world and ultimately our existence possible. Eighty years ...

A free neutron outside a nucleus is not stable. It undergoes beta decay at a probability. Over time, the number of free neutrons decreases exponentially at a time constant, which is called the neutron ...

Theorists find new electromagnetic effects that shift the spin-dependent coupling of the nucleon to the weak force and point out the implications for new physics in beta decay. Outside atomic nuclei, ...

A few days ago I wrote about how different measurements of the Hubble parameter gave results that didn't quite agree. It's not the only example of such an experimental disagreement. In fact, one of ...

To solve a long-standing puzzle about how long a neutron can “live” outside an atomic nucleus, physicists entertained a wild but testable theory positing the existence of a right-handed version of our ...

Neutron stars harbor some of the most extreme environments in the universe: their densities soar to several times those of ...

IN the theory of decay as proposed by Fermi 1, one assumes the existence of elementary processes in which a neutron is transformed into a proton by simultaneous creation of an electron and a neutrino.