Densest material ever created - quark gluon plasma By unleashing the fantastic energy of thousands of ultrahigh-speed collisions each second researchers are breaking subatomic particles into even denser and hotter forms of matter, hoping to find out what the universe was made of right after the Big Bang; to be more exact, one trillionth of a second after it. They found Exotic dense substance known as the quark-gluon plasma, this amazing exotic substance can exist only at incredibly high temperatures or pressures, and it consists almost entirely of free quarks and gluons; it is possible that the whole universe was filled only with this substance.

Forty–five new radioisotopes found at Japan’s heavy–ion accelerator facility Radioactive isotopes (RI) or radioisotopes, unstable chemical elements with either more or fewer neutrons than their stable counterparts, open a door onto a world of nuclear chemistry where standard laws break down and novel phenomena emerge.

Our journey to understand the nature of everything around us begins from a truly momentous event. It was nearly 10−15 billion years ago that a hot dense explosion took place. A universe shaping event has been termed as the Big Bang.... Following this spectacular explosion, some 300 thousand years after the Big Bang the rapidly expanding universe cooled enough.

The original element probably formed was the hydrogen atom − Gravity condensed the hydrogen atoms into galaxies with billions of stars. Eventually, some of the first generation of stars exploded. It is from the debris of the explosion of one of such first generation of stars that our own solar system was formed.

We are all made of stardust, as is everything that surrounds us. We don’t own the atoms that makeup our body − we are simply their present caretakers. There will be many caretakers to follow.

Atoms are so small that there are more than 10 billion trillions of them in each breathe we exhale and we inhale atoms that were once part of everyone who has ever lived. We are literally breathing one another. In a way we are all one. We are all the children of a star.

John Dalton laid the foundation for modern version of atomic theory by defining atom as the basic unit of an element that can enter into chemical combination. He also said that all atoms of a given element are same and those all have same mass and chemical properties. Later, experiments have shown that atoms are composed of three kinds of sub atomic particles namely electrons, protons and neutrons and at the center of atom, an extremely dense core called nucleus exists. Protons and neutrons are found in nuclei and hence they are also called nucleons.

Each element is associated with a unique number called Atomic number which equals the number of protons in the nuclei of any of its atoms. The mass number is the total number of protons and neutrons present in the nucleus of an atom of an element. Isotopes are elements with atoms that have the same atomic number but different mass numbers.

Periodic table: The masterpiece of organized information

The periodic table is a masterpiece of organized chemical information with a tabular display of the chemical elements, organized on the basis of their properties. The elements are arranged by order of atomic number in such a way that the periodic properties of the elements are made clear. The periodic table is rectangular in general outline, gaps are included in the rows or periods to keep elements with similar properties together in columns or groups, forming distinct rectangular areas or blocks.

The periodic table accurately predicts the properties of various elements and provides a useful framework for analyzing chemical behavior. The current form of table is generally credited to Dmitri Mendeleev, though the layout has been refined and extended as new elements have been discovered and new theoretical models developed to explain chemical behavior. Many presentations of the periodic table show a dark stair−step diagonal line along the metalloids, with metals to the left of the line and non−metals to the right.