The 117th element of the periodic table has been synthesized

Russian physicists from the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions named after. Flerov of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, together with American colleagues from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed to synthesize the 117th element of the periodic table (conventional name - ununseptium) and thereby fill the missing “cell” in the series of superheavy elements.

A press conference dedicated to this event with the participation of the head of the experiment, Academician Yuri Oganesyan, as well as the director of the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions Sergei Dmitriev and the vice-director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research Mikhail Itkis took place at RIA Novosti on April 8. The corresponding scientific article was accepted for publication on April 5 in the American journal Physical Review Letters .

Let us recall that elements 104 to 108 were obtained by employees of the same laboratory back in Soviet times.

In the late 1990s - early 2000s, scientific groups from Russia, Germany, Japan and the USA synthesized superheavy elements with atomic numbers 112-116 and the heaviest element to date, the 118th element. Some of the “newcomers” turned out to be so “stable” (living not microseconds, but seconds) that even their chemical properties were studied.

The experiment on the synthesis of the 117th element started at the end of June last year. To do this, first in the USA, a sufficient amount of berkelium-249 (the 97th element) was produced at a powerful reactor, which served as a target. It was bombarded with ions of the calcium-48 isotope (an extremely expensive substance produced by Rosatom enterprises) at the U-400 cyclotron. As a result, six events of the birth of nuclei of the 117th element were recorded.

The collisions that accompanied this experiment, which never became “purely Russian,” are noteworthy. Russian nuclear scientists needed at least three years and several million dollars to produce berkelium-249. On the American side, before the arrival of “Obama’s people,” there was also some stagnation, but everything changed in 2008, when the proposal of the Oganesyan group was accepted. As a result, the target substance (22 milligrams) was provided free of charge - as a contribution to the general experiment of the American side. At the same time, the Americans were forced to refuse a similar request to their German colleagues from Darmstadt, thereby completely trusting the Russian specialists.

Fortunately, it was possible not only to get quick decisions from US official services and to persuade the American pilot to take on board the rapidly disintegrating cargo at his own risk (the half-life of berkelium-249 is 320 days), but also to quickly contact the senior management of Russian customs officials, the “parcel” was delayed due to incorrect registration.

According to the rules of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), to confirm the discovery it is necessary to reproduce the experiment in another laboratory. Only after this will ununseptius (117th) be able to receive its own name. The heaviest element “with a name” at the moment is copernicium (or Copernicium, Latin Copernicium, Cn) - the 112th element, first obtained in Darmstadt.

Maxim Borisov