Radium watch dials put the idea of glowing green radioactive elements in the public consciousness, but radium doesn’t actually glow. If you want to see the glow of radiation, take a look at the blue ...

Stars exploding as supernovae are the main sources of heavy chemical elements in the Universe. In particular, radioactive atomic nuclei are synthesized in the hot, innermost regions during the ...

The amount of long-lived radioactive elements incorporated into a rocky planet as it forms may be a crucial factor in determining its future habitability. That's because internal heating from the ...

Take a look at the first column of the periodic table. The elements in this group include some of the most common and useful ones on the planet - and they probably all wish they weren’t associated ...

Hickory dickory dock, this nucleus could make a great clock. A special variety of the element thorium hosts an atomic nucleus that could be used to keep time, scientists say. In a first, researchers ...

Radioactive material gets a bad rap, what with radiation and fallout and nuclear waste and all. But it offers some practical uses. One of the coolest (OK, maybe the coolest) is using radioactive ...

Uranium is a radioactive metal central to one of the most devastating acts of war in history. On Aug. 6, 1945, a 10-foot-long (3 meters) bomb fell from the sky over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Element 99 — mysterious and exceptionally radioactive — sits inconspicuously in the bottom row of the periodic table. Named for legendary physicist Albert Einstein, einsteinium has been one of the ...

A battery made of diamonds could power devices for thousands of years, scientists have announced. This battery would be powered by a diamond surrounding a radioactive isotope of carbon known as carbon ...