Today, the heaviest element (the one with the highest atomic number) known is oganesson, the element formerly known as ununoctium because its atomic number is 118. A couple of “positions” below this element we have tennese (117); and livermorium, element 116 (an element that will be important in this story).
And above? Can we beat that record?
Element 120. Above all, we may soon be able to synthesize an element even heavier than oganesson: unumbilium, element 120, that is, an atom with 120 protons in its nucleus. All thanks to a new method designed to synthesize another, lighter element, livermorium.
From 22 to 118, and beyond. The new process for creating livermorium involves accelerating atomic nuclei of titanium-50 (a rare isotope of titanium in which the 22 protons of the nucleus are accompanied by 28 neutrons) to crash them into plutonium-224 (94 protons and 150 neutrons).
When these two isotopes fuse, the result is an atomic nucleus with 116 protons and 178 neutrons. This new atom loses four neutrons to become a more stable version, livermorium-290.
88-inch cyclotron. This process took 22 days of operation of the 88-inch cyclotron at Berkeley Laboratory. The cyclotron is a particle accelerator designed in the early 20th century, capable of accelerating heavy ions such as those used in the operation.
The team recently presented this technique at the conference Nuclear Structure 2024and also sent an article to the magazine Physical Review Letters for publication here. In the meantime, the draft with the details of the process can be consulted in the repository ArXiv.
More than half a year. The success of synthesizing livermorium, however, is second only to the potential of the new technique to go beyond element 116, to 120 in particular, although the team admits that the 22 days of operations used to generate livermorium will not be sufficient for this future operation.
“We think it will take 10 times longer to make 120 than 116. It is not easy, but it seems possible now,” explained Reiner Kruecken, scientific director of the laboratory, in a press release. Nevertheless, the team is optimistic about the possibility.
“This reaction had never been demonstrated before, and it was essential to prove that it was possible before embarking on the attempt to create 120,” explained Jacklyn Gates, who heads the project, in the same note. “The creation of a new element is an extremely rare feat. It is exciting to be part of the process and to have a promising path ahead.”
The “island of stability”. Part of the optimism lies in the real possibility of finding a stable isotope of this element. The team believes that element 120 may be found on the so-called “island of stability,” a hypothetical group of superheavy elements with unique properties. The superheavies known to date are unstable and fade away in fractions of a second so small that they are difficult to study.
However, a precise combination of protons and neutrons could in principle give this element enough stability to allow its study. A study that would open the door to finding out new lessons in atomic physics, by better understanding its extreme cases.
As? The process also relies on the isotope titanium-50. The difference is that instead of hitting the plutonium isotope mentioned above, the target will be a different one this time: Californium-249 (with 98 protons and 151 neutrons). This should create an unstable isotope of element 120 with 179 neutrons, of which it would lose 3 or 4 to become a stable isotope with 120 protons and 175 or 176 neutrons.
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