Livermorium:
Scientists at Berkeley Lab’s 88-Inch Cyclotron have successfully created superheavy element 116, also known as livermorium.
- Livermorium is part of the “superheavy” category of elements.
- These are elements that exist beyond the known elements in the periodic table and are typically very unstable.
- It is artificially produced transuranium elementof atomic number 116.
- In 2000 scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, announced the production of atoms of livermorium when curium-248 was fused with calcium-48.
- It does not occur naturally in the Earth’s crust.
- Researchers used a powerful particle accelerator to smash together titanium-50 atoms.
- They needed to produce a highly intense beam of titanium-50 and target it at a thin layer of plutonium to produce livermorium.
- Over 22 days, they managed to create two atoms of livermorium, marking a significant achievement.
