Say hello to your new desktop background. In May 1949, LIFE Magazine published a stunning series of images to accompany an issue dedicated largely to The Atom. You can check out the feature in its ...

In some sense, what you might have suspected from the first day of high-school chemistry is true: The periodic table is a colossal waste of time. Nine out of every 10 atoms in the universe are ...

So the periodic table has expanded again with the addition late last year of four new superheavy elements, bringing the known total up to 118. But the hunt for new elements started with efforts to ...