International Scientists Race to Create the Heaviest Element in the Universe
Jon Petter Omtvedt Yngve Vogt/Apollon-UiO Two international teams are competing to create the heaviest element in the universe. Super-heavy elements are the elements at the bottom of the periodic table with an atomic number (the number of protons) above 104. The previous heaviest element, temporarily called ununoctium, was "discovered" in 2002, and the two teams are now attempting to produce elements 119 and 120. Jon Petter Omtvedt, a professor of nuclear chemistry at University of Oslo, is working with scientists from Western Europe, Japan and the United States, running experiments at the German GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung. The other team is made up of Russian and American scientists working out of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia. "The competition is razor-sharp," said Omtvedt. "Super-heavy elements are highly unstable and very difficult to create. It is like finding something unknown in outer space." Manufacturing a single atom of a new...