Experiment could open door to new element discoveries, scientists say

An international team of researchers has successfully produced an isotope of the superheavy element livermorium – a feat they say opens the door to discovering new elements.

The experiments took place at the U.S. Energy Department’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where researchers successfully tested a new way to make the superheavy element using the lab’s specialized particle accelerator, the 88-Inch Cyclotron. They reported their findings in Physical Review Letters.

Superheavy elements – called such because they have far more protons in their nucleus than regular elements – are created in a lab and decay within milliseconds. Researchers have long been hunting for a way to make the elusive elements more stable so they can be better studied. Usually, scientists use a calcium beam to fuse together isotopes of multiple elements. These reactions smash the existing elements’ protons and neutrons together; under the right experimental conditions, the protons and neutrons fuse into a new atom with a heavier atomic mass.

These heaviest elements, with names like “darmstadtium” and “oganesson,” hang out at the outskirts of the periodic table.

This time, the researchers tried a new reaction to create element 116, livermorium, blasting a beam of trillions of titanium-50 ions containing 22 protons at plutonium-244, which has 94 protons. Since the titanium ray shot trillions of ions per second, the researchers say, over 22 days, they attempted the reaction 10,000 trillion times.

The successful fusion reaction that resulted formed two atoms of the short-lived element.

Because titanium isotopes can theoretically be fused with californium isotopes to create the still-unproven element 120, the researchers write, the experiment “validates that discoveries of new (superheavy elements) are indeed within experimental reach.”

Element 120 is only theoretical for now, as is the threshold for an “island of stability” on the future periodic table whose elements are longer-lived and can be better studied. But the door is now open to an attempt to create element 120, which would be the heaviest atom ever produced.

“When we’re trying to make these incredibly rare elements, we are standing at the absolute edge of human knowledge and understanding, and there is no guarantee that physics will work the way we expect,” Jennifer Pore, a scientist in the Berkeley Lab’s Heavy Element Group, said in a news release. “Creating element 116 with titanium validates that this method of production works and we can now plan our hunt for element 120.”