Physicists have found a new “island of inversion” in the nucleus of molybdenum-84, a perfectly balanced atom with equal numbers of protons and neutrons. The discovery upends a decades-old assumption ...

Physicists working with molybdenum-84, a nucleus containing exactly 42 protons and 42 neutrons, have found that this seemingly balanced atom defies one of nuclear physics’ longest-standing ...

Benjamin Mottelson was a US-born physicist who specialized in theoretical work on the structure of the atomic nucleus. During the 1950s, in close collaboration with his Danish colleague Aage Bohr, ...