Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 1 May 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.794
News
The heaviest element yet?
Researchers claim to have seen an element with an atomic number of 122, but some are sceptical.
Could super-heavy elements be lurking in plain sight? One group of physicists says that they are, and claims to have seen the heaviest element yet found hiding amongst thorium atoms.
Some theories predict that some super-heavy elements might be unusually stable, thanks to a 'magic' number of protons and neutrons, and so could be lying around in nature.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email redesign@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
An old particle accelerator can be a high finesse mass spec/calutron. Feed in thorium, skim the desired mass, and collect a (small) flask of slop. 122-E-292 is intensely enriched in there or it isn't. Sublime science becomes brute force engineering. There is no shortage of Indian monazite-Ce. Somebody should look.
The old calutrons were retired several years ago. The new ways of doing things involve ionizations using lasers on atoms in traps....
Just to clarify my reported comment on the mass spectroscopy technique above: It should have read that the question of any molecule surviving through the spectrometer and giving a background signal is an important one to be asked (and answered) during the peer review process which has not yet happened.