Beryllium-14’s halo is made of four neutrons, so the researchers expected to see that halo break apart and become four individual neutrons. That would have been detected as four distinct signals.

Researchers have observed a rare nuclear decay. Namely, the team measured low-kinetic-energy protons emitted after the beta decay of a neutron-rich nucleus beryllium-11.

By choosing the energy of the protons correctly, Beryllium in a particular excited state is produced, which quickly decays back to its ground state by emitting an electron and a positron.

The end of this chain is marked by the fusion of protons with beryllium-7 to form boron-8. This process is key in determining the flow of high-energy solar neutrinos that reach the Earth.

The technique involves the laser cooling of beryllium ions, a process that relies on light absorption to chill ions down to just a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero. This cooling cannot ...

Most of the time, beryllium's configuration consists of two orbiting clusters that look like helium-4 nuclei (each with two protons and two neutrons), and one additional neutron orbiting around.

Two protons of an alpha particle seemed to cling to the nucleus of a beryllium atom (thereby theoretically transmuting that atom of beryllium into an atom of carbon).

NO PROTONS ALLOWED The collision of two varieties of helium nuclei at a Japanese lab produced beryllium nuclei and tetraneutrons, nuclei with four neutrons but no protons.This illustration depicts ...