Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) is setting its sights on creating element 120 as part of a new US effort to discover the first elements in row eight of the periodic table. The move follows the breakdown of the US–Russian partnership, which had previously discovered the five heaviest elements, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
We all knew
Even if eighth-row elements can exist, producing them is likely to be difficult
But I found it fascinating to discover
All attempts to synthesise such elements have failed so far. An attempt to make element 119 has been ongoing since 2018 at the Riken research institute in Japan. The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia also plans to make its own attempts at synthesising the first few period 8 elements.
Where are Howard and Tony Stark when you need them?
Yo, didn’t they just find some asteroid that scans too heavy for current elements?
Seems like things are starting to heat up in this area all of a sudden…
…And I don’t mean this at all, but between all of this prep work setting up us discovering new elements, plus the sudden influx of alien talk to congress, etc…like…if I was a conspiracy theorist my head would be spinning right now with the possibilities!
Conspiracy theorists always see connections where there’s nothing. Reality doesn’t need to conveniently align to make that possible.
I mean, we’ve been discovering new elements for a while now. Bobby Brocolli has a great video series on the hunt for the elements.
Oh for sure! I’m a bit of a scientist myself, and get how it works, but an entire new row of elements would be quite the achievement!
I imagine these are elements that are so short-lived they decay into known daughter particles in fractions of a second
