When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. How long is the lifespan of a free neutron? Different experiments provide contradicting answers.

On 13 September 2025, 40 researchers came together at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) to discuss the neutron-lifetime ...

Neutrons are among the basic building blocks of matter. As long as they are part of a stable atomic nucleus, they can stay there for arbitrary periods of time. However, the situation is different for ...

A new "bathtub" experiment has allowed physicists to measure the lifetime of a free neutron far more precisely than ever before. The breakthrough could help probe the fringes of the Standard Model of ...

The neutron-rich oxygen isotopes oxygen-27 and oxygen-28 exist as very short-lived resonances, report scientists based on the first observation of their decay into oxygen-24 and three and four ...

An international team of researchers recently measured the lifetime of a neutron outside of an atomic nucleus with extraordinary precision. By their measurements, the neutron survived for 14.629 ...

A worldwide collaboration of scientists has announced the most precise measurement ever taken of a neutron's lifetime. How? By giving neutrons a nice long soak in an ultracold "neutron bathtub." Share ...

A neutron decays into a proton, an electron, and an antineutrino. In the QCD lattice approach, a discrete space is used for the calculation. The different colours on the lattice represent the gluons ...

The creation of the lightest uranium atom ever gives scientists a better understanding of a fundamental type of radioactive decay. All elements have one or more isotopes, which differ from each other ...