{"id":5255,"date":"2013-07-19T15:36:21","date_gmt":"2013-07-19T14:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/?p=5255"},"modified":"2013-07-19T15:36:21","modified_gmt":"2013-07-19T14:36:21","slug":"one-flerovium-atom-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2013\/07\/one-flerovium-atom-at-a-time.html","title":{"rendered":"One flerovium atom at a time"},"content":{"rendered":"

This month<\/a>, our tour of the elements takes us to a corner of the periodic table that has only been explored recently, and from which only a handful of atoms have been observed. In the case of flerovium<\/a>, literally one atom at a time. The superheavy element 114 has such a high nuclear charge that several months of nuclear fusion (in which calcium-48 ion beams are directed into targets of plutonium or curium isotopes) are required to produce just one atom \u2014 which then decays within seconds.<\/p>\n

\"nchem.1688-i1\"<\/a>

Georgii Nikolajevich Flerov
\u00a9 RIA NOVOSTI \/ ALAMY<\/p><\/div>\n

The discovery of element 114 is credited to a collaboration between the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in Dubna, Russia and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. In fact, things turned out pretty well for the two labs with two elements named<\/a> at the same time: element 114, flerovium, and element 116, livermorium.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll let you read Peter Schwerdtfeger<\/a>\u2019s account<\/a> on what properties we might expect from flerovium, based on its structure, but also taking into account relativistic effects. Could those effects endow element 114 with an electronically closed-shell configuration, as suggested decades ago by Kenneth Pitzer<\/a>? Is flerovium a gas at room temperature, or is it a metallic liquid? The properties and reactivity of flerovium are investigated both through calculations and experiments. For now, Peter Schwerdtfeger\u2019s conclusion is that we should \u201cexpect the unexpected\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This month, our tour of the elements takes us to a corner of the periodic table that has only been explored recently, and from which only a handful of atoms have been observed. In the case of flerovium, literally one atom at a time. The superheavy element 114 has such a high nuclear charge that several months of nuclear fusion (in which calcium-48 ion beams are directed into targets of plutonium or curium isotopes) are required to produce just one atom \u2014 which then decays within seconds.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":326,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-your-element"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/326"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}