7 - Nuclear Charge
According to this fascinating article, "No living person has shaped the architecture of the periodic table more than Oganessian." The fact that scientists actually detect new superheavy elements by looking for alpha particles that have been emitted from the heavy element's decay series is pretty interesting and clever.
There was an emotional response to shutting down the old accelerators that gave them so many new elements. Scientists have feelings!
The cold fusion technique of "softly touching" the nuclei together instead of smashing them together was also pretty interesting. I can't imagine doing research for 9+ years and only producing THREE ATOMS of a new element with none of them surviving for more than 5 milliseconds!
A line by one of the nuclear chemists was, "Only God knows the statistics."
The video below is from the article.
The image below is a good representation of the $60 million SuperHeavy Element Factory (SHEF) which is what they are now using to hunt for elements 119 and 120.
There was an emotional response to shutting down the old accelerators that gave them so many new elements. Scientists have feelings!
The cold fusion technique of "softly touching" the nuclei together instead of smashing them together was also pretty interesting. I can't imagine doing research for 9+ years and only producing THREE ATOMS of a new element with none of them surviving for more than 5 milliseconds!
A line by one of the nuclear chemists was, "Only God knows the statistics."
The video below is from the article.
The image below is a good representation of the $60 million SuperHeavy Element Factory (SHEF) which is what they are now using to hunt for elements 119 and 120.