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A worldwide group of scientists
has just published a paper approving the presence of element number
117—ununseptium. Ununseptium is the heaviest element so far created, with an
atom of ununseptium balancing an atom of lead by 40 percent. So make more space
on your periodic table, there's a new metal in the city.
Almost Seventy-two researchers
and engineers from 16 organizations around the world cooperated to approve
element 117's presence. The metal was first informed by a team of Russian and
American researchers in 2010. Now it's confirmed, and it took a lot of effort
to get here.
Hinde was the member of a group
at the GSI laboratory in Germany who merged calcium 48 and berkelium 249. This
is not easy, since berkelium 249 is mutually hard to produce in considerable
quantities and has a half life of about 320 days. Less than half of any quantity
created will still be about a year after it was prepared, which means shipping
and distillation can't wait. The resultant product, like all atoms denser than
lead, was unstable. By inspecting the alpha particles emitted the team resolved
that these were the creation of two decay chains, both originating with 294117,
that is an atom with 117 protons and 177 neutrons. One of the chains comprised
the isotopes 270Db and266Lr, the latter adding four neutrons to the earlier
highest isotope of lawrencium.
Super heavy elements, which
are beyond atomic number 104 on the periodic table, aren't detected in nature.
They can only be produced by fusing two different kinds of nuclei at each other
in a particle accelerator, and expecting that a few of them fuse together. In
the case of ununseptium, that meant pointing a beam of calcium 48 ions at a lump
of berkelium 249.
Even the constituents in this
heavy metal formula are challenging: the 13-milligram berkelium 249 sample used
in the reading took 18 months to fuse, and with a half-life of only 330 days, when
the sample was produced the battle was on.
But it all slated out: the group,
operational at GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, located in
Darmstadt, Germany, detected the formation of four atoms of element 117, however
they decomposed into other elements within milliseconds.
Now that the element has been detected
in numerous experimentations, it goes up for analysis: the International Unions
of Pure and Applied Physics and Chemistry will choose whether the proof is solid
enough to eternally add the element to the periodic table. If they accept it,
element 117 will get a appropriate name—"ununseptium" is just a place
container, derivative from the Latin for "one one seven."
Though "created the
heaviest metal ever" jingles like a pretty badass achievement in itself,
the real significance of this discovery is that it promotes our information
about an uncharted area of the periodic table. While element 117 decomposed
almost instantly, it formed isotopes that stayed stable for hours. "This
is of paramount importance as even longer-lived isotopes are predicted to exist
in a region of enhanced nuclear stability," explains Professor Christoph
Düllmann, who directed the whole study.
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