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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

On a stage in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization headquarters in Paris, Yuri Oganessian holds a microphone in one hand and a small remote control in the other. Over ...

One hundred fifty years after Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev published his system for neatly arranging the elements, the periodic table it gave birth to hangs in every chemistry classroom in the ...

In Frank Herbert’s space opera Dune, a precious natural substance called spice melange grants people the ability to navigate vast expanses of the cosmos to build an intergalactic civilization. In real ...

Rare earth elements (REEs) are a group of 17 metallic elements essential in many modern technologies. Despite their name, they are not actually rare, but they are difficult to extract and refine. In ...

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 ...