By firing calcium isotopes into a plutonium target inside a particle accelerator, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have finally confirmed the Russian discovery of the superheavy element 114. It wasn’t easy. It took more than a week of running the experiment to generate a measly two atoms of the stuff, which they reported in Physical Review Letters last week. It’s basic science at the outer limits of matter. “We’re learning the limits of nuclei,” said Ken Gregorich, a nuclear physicist at LBL. “How many protons can you pack into a nucleus before it falls apart?” More>A story on this topic also appeared in UPI, Fox News, Popular Science and Scientific Computing.
Posts
