The blast is what people imagine. A sudden flash, a rising cloud, the moment when history splits into “before” and “after”.

The nuclei of certain atoms are stable and under ordinary circumstances, stable nuclei do not undergo change. The nuclei of other atoms are unstable. These nuclei undergo change spontaneously, that is ...

In a random moment, all energy is lost. The unstable subject cannot help but decay, slowly but surely, letting go of particles to become stable. It loses itself to become balanced again. This is a ...

Gold cannot form until certain unstable atomic nuclei break apart. Exactly how those nuclear transformations unfold has long been difficult to ...