Chemists have managed to create a new massively heavy element by smashing together atoms of calcium and berkelium.
A new paper by Yuri Oganessian of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia has been accepted by Physical Review Letters. It announces “the discovery of a new chemical element with atomic number Z=117”.
“Fifty years ago, the elements beyond the first 100 on Mendeleev’s periodic table were believed not to exist, that their half-life periods were so short that there was no sense in talking of them,” says Oganessian (RIA Novosti). “We have managed to expand the borders of the physical world.”
Even better, analysis of the new element suggests theories about these super-heavy elements becoming more stable as they get heavier may be correct. This so-called “island of stability” might mean that some of these elements could hang around long enough to be actually studied, rather than vanishing nearly as soon as they’re created.
Either side of the periodic table around Element 117 is already filled, with elements 116 and 118 already having been created. The gap was filled by smashing Calcium-48 atoms into a Berkelium-249 target.
“During a long (half a year) experiment, six events of the ‘birth’ of the new element were registered,” says a statement from A.N. Sissakian of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research.
“The properties of a decay of an isotope of the 117th element and its daughter products – isotopes of elements 115, 113, 111, 109, 107 and 105 together with the isotopes of elements 112-116 and 118 synthesized in Dubna before – are the direct proof for the existence of the ‘Stability Island’ of super-heavy nuclei.”
Witold Nazarewicz, of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, told Science News. “These are very, very interesting results. This was carefully planned, and it would have been very difficult to synthesize this element without the berkelium target.”
Although it is currently called ununseptium, a proper name will be given to it in due course. Bring on element 119!
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