Everything we can see and touch, and quite a lot that we can’t as well, is made of tiny particles called atoms. Some substances, like particles of this iron, contain only one kind of atom. Iron is an ...

If you were to take every element in the periodic table and order them by how abundant they are in the Universe, you'd find something a little bit surprising. The most common element is hydrogen, ...

Immediately after the Big Bang, before the first stars in the Universe ever formed, the Universe consisted of hydrogen (element #1), helium (element #2), and pretty much nothing else. Despite ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a ...

Are we made of stars? This video segment adapted from NOVA features scientists studying light emissions from exploding stars, called supernovas. Their observations and analyses can tell us the origin ...

Rare earth elements have a number of useful properties that make them highly sought after by the tech and energy industries. This collection of 17 metals includes the 15 metallic elements found at the ...

The story of the fifteenth element began in Hamburg, in 1669. The unsuccessful glassblower and alchemist Hennig Brandt was trying to find the philosopher’s stone, a mythical substance that could turn ...

A handful of asteroids in our solar system are so dense that no element on Earth can explain their properties. Instead, they may be made of naturally occurring "superheavy elements" beyond those ...

The story of how Earth became a habitable planet is often told through collisions, volcanoes and oceans. Less attention is ...

There are lots of different substances but only just over a hundred elements. An element is a substance that is made up of only one kind of atom. The atoms in a particular element are the same as each ...