Physicists have reported synthesizing element number 117, the latest in the quest to create artificial “superheavy” elements in the laboratory. A paper describing the discovery has been accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters. A team led by Yuri Oganessian of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, reports smashing together calcium-48 — an isotope with 20 protons and 28 neutrons — with berkelium-249, which has 97 protons and 152 neutrons. The collision spit out neutrons to create two isotopes of an element with 117 protons, one with 176 neutrons and the other with 177.
“These are very, very interesting results,” says Witold Nazarewicz, a theorist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. “This was carefully planned, and it would have been very difficult to synthesize this element without the berkelium target.” Read more on sciencenews.org

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