The term
superheavy elements refers to the elements who have an atomic number
greater than 104 (most of the elements after 94 to 104 can be created as
by-products of decay of other elements). These superheavy elements are
produced in accelerator labs and decay very shortly after they are
created (only a fraction of a second). They have used these accelerator
labs to create elements all the way up to element 118.
A team of researchers at an accelerator lab at GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research, did this to confirm
the existence of superheavy element 115. The experiment they conducted
was to figure out the element's fingerprint. They deposited an layer of
Americium on foil, then bombarded the foil with Calcium ions. Using a
new detector system, which allows photons with alpha-decay and its
daughter products to be registered, created the element's fingerprint. http://www.
In 2008, Amnon
Marinov at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem claimed that he found
superheavy element 122 in a Thorium sample. Element 111, or Roentgenium,
is very chemically similar to gold, and in 2010 that same scientist
claimed that he found evidence of Roentgenium in gold. The way he
claimed to have found evidence was through this experiment. He first
heated gold to 1127 degrees Celsius, and then left it in a vacuum. He
thought that since gold atoms are lighter than Roentgenium that they
would evaporate and he would be left with Roentgenium. After a few weeks
of evaporation he ran what was left through a mass spectrometer and the
results showed peaks of a mass of 261 which is supposed to be what
Roentgenium's mass would be, so he says that this proves its discovery. http://www.
His results are controversial,
but that were also very controversial when he claimed to have found
element 122 in Thorium, but he does have a reason for his controversial
claims. He
speculates that we do see these superheavy elements on earth, but only
in very small concentrations that cannot be detected by most common ways
of doing so.
Posted by Carrie Bookheimer
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