The experiment paves the way to potentially making an entirely new one: element 120, also known as the 'island of stability.'
A team of scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California announced today that it created livermorium, or element 116, using a titanium particle beam for the first time.
“We needed for nature to be kind, and nature was kind,” said Reiner Kruecken, director of nuclear science at Berkeley Lab, in a laboratory release. “We think it will take about 10 times longer to make 120 than 116. It’s not easy, but it seems feasible now.”The researchers used a beam of titanium-50 in the attempt to generate element 116, livermorium. They succeeded, making it the heaviest element yet made at Berkeley Lab.
To turn the titanium into a beam, the scientists heated up a chunk of the element until it began to vaporize at nearly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit . Then, the team bombarded the titanium with microwaves, removing 22 of its electrons and readying the ions to be accelerated in Berkeley Lab’s The titanium ions were aimed at a target—plutonium in this case—and trillions of the ions hit the target per second to fuse into an entirely different element. The team ultimately made two livermorium atoms across 22 days of operations. Using titanium in a beam is a new way of making heavier elements; previously, elements 114 through 118 had been made with a beam of calcium-48.
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