Just 100 years ago, on 9 July 1925, Werner Heisenberg wrote a letter to his friend, colleague and fiercest critic, Wolfgang ...

The question of where atoms come from requires a lot of physics to be answered completely – and even then, physicists only have good guesses to explain how some atoms are formed.

An atom consists of a heavy center, called the nucleus, made of particles called protons and neutrons. An atom has lighter ...

Why did they form at that time? Astronomers know from observing distant exploding stars that the size of the universe has been getting bigger since the Big Bang. When the hydrogen and helium atoms ...

Article citations More>> Cole, D.C. and Zou, Y. (2004) Simulation Study of Aspects of the Classical Hydrogen Atom Interacting with Electromagnetic Radiation: Circular Orbits. Journal of Scientific ...

Confined within an atom, the quantum waves bounce back and forth, cancelling out in some places and reinforcing in others. Where they reinforce are Bohr’s discrete orbits. The atom, it turns out, is ...

Using lasers, they then boosted the atoms’ outermost electrons to very high orbits, making the atoms approximately 1,000 times larger than ordinary rubidium atoms.

Electrons whiz around the atom's nucleus in tiny spherical orbits. Protons and electrons have precisely the same amount but exactly the opposite type of electric charge.

Quantum theory describes events that take place on extremely short time scales. In the past, such events were regarded as 'momentary' or 'instantaneous': An electron orbits the nucleus of an atom ...