Feb. 12, 2021 , 11:50 AM
For decades, nuclear physicists have blasted record-breaking superheavy elements into existence, extending the periodic table step by step beyond uranium, the heaviest natural element. Such heavyweights tend to be unstable, but theory predicts “magic numbers” of protons and neutrons that confer extra stability, and finding a long-lived superheavy has long been a holy grail for researchers.
Element 114, known as flerovium and first created in 1998, was considered the best candidate for extra stability, as theorists believed 114 was a magic number of protons. But researchers now report that it is no more stable than the superheavy elements near it on the periodic table. Element “114 is apparently not magic, or at least not as magic as classical predictions suggest,” says study leader Dirk Rudolph of Lund University.
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Elemente: Insel der Stabilität rückt weiter weg - Flerovium hat offenbar doch keine komplette Protonenschale im Kern
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An Octad for Darmstadtium and Excitement for Copernicium
January 22, 2021•
Physics 14, s6
The discovery that copernicium can decay into a new isotope of darmstadtium and the observation of a previously unseen excited state of copernicium provide clues to the location of the “island of stability.”
Orlando Florin Rosu/stock.adobe.com
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A holy grail of nuclear physics is to understand the stability of the periodic table’s heaviest elements. The problem is, these elements only exist in the lab and are hard to make. In an experiment at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Germany, researchers have now observed a previously unseen isotope of the heavy element darmstadtium and measured the decay of an excited state of an isotope of another heavy element, copernicium [1]. The results could provide “anchor points” for theories that predict the stability of these heavy elements, says Anton Såmark-Roth, of Lund University in Sweden, who helped conduct th