Frankly speaking ...

Cross-sections were frequently mentioned in the Superheavy: Making and Breaking the Periodic Table by Kit Chapman , but the explanation of what they represent is brief. I found it helpful to put together this summary explaining what cross-sections mean in the context of creating new elements. Cross Sections In nuclear physics, a cross-section is a measure of the probability that a specific nuclear reaction (like fusion) will occur. When scientists say the cross-sections get smaller as the atomic number (Z) increases, they mean that it becomes exponentially harder and less likely for two nuclei to successfully fuse and survive as a new, super-heavy element. Think of the cross-section as the “size of the target” you are trying to hit. As you try to create heavier elements, that target shrinks from the size of a barn door to the size of a needle’s eye. Infographic: The Challenge of Element Synthesis Why the Cross-Section Decreases The production of a super-heavy element is a thre...

On January 6, 2026 , the mathematical community reached a significant milestone: the resolution of Erdős problem #728 . While mathematical problems are solved daily, this breakthrough marks the first time an open Erdős problem—historically the domain of human intuition—was documented as resolved through the collaboration of artificial intelligence and formal verification. The Problem: Gaps in Factorials Originally posed in 1975 by Paul Erdős and colleagues, problem #728 explores the deep architecture of prime factorisations within binomial coefficients. The Technical Goal : The problem asks if there are infinitely many integers a ,  b , and n that satisfy a complex divisibility condition: a ! b ! ∣  n !( a  +  b  −  n )! under specific constraints. The “Spirit” of the Challenge : The original wording was noted by mathematician Terence Tao as being slightly “misformulated,” allowing for trivial solutions if the variables were allowed to be extremely large. The Fix : To re...