The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.Ĭopyright © 2013 NPR. If further study shows it really, really exists, an international committee will decide which of its many discoverers around the world will get naming rights. HERZBERG: It could well be that there are elements that live long enough to make milligram or microgram quantities eventually and do something with them.īRUMFIEL: In the meantime, 115 doesn't even have a name. They can stick around for minutes, days, maybe even years. Elements on this island are even heavier than 115, but strange quantum effects keep them from breaking apart. Nuclear researchers call it the island of stability. It really is a down-to-earth element 115.īRUMFIEL: But 115 could be on the edge of something really magical. Element 115 was the first superheavy element with an odd atomic number ( Z) that we synthesized in nuclear reactions using a beam of accelerated 48 Ca ions. HERZBERG: It has nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with antigravity devices or spaceships or anything else. So what's this exotic new element good for? The work will appear in Physical Review Letters. and Japan, have detected an X-ray signal that makes it much more likely 115 exists, if only briefly. Now, Herzberg at the University of Liverpool in the U.K., together with colleagues in Europe, the U.S. They couldn't measure it before it blew itself apart. According to the Mendeleevs nomenclature of undiscovered elements, moscovium was named as eka-bismuth or element-115. Sources, facts, uses, scarcity (SRI), podcasts, alchemical symbols, videos and images. Russian scientists first spotted it a few years ago, but they couldn't be sure. Element Moscovium (Mc), Group 15, Atomic Number 115, p-block, Mass 289. And that is why it is very, very difficult to create these super-heavy elements.īRUMFIEL: In fact, that's one reason element 115 isn't official. HERZBERG: If you just put positive charges into it, you get something that tries to rip itself apart eventually. This creates big new elements packed to the brim with positively charged protons. Scientists start with elements that already exist in nature and combine them together. HERZBERG: What you get out is a perfectly baked cake.īRUMFIEL: Or if you're a nuclear physicist like Herzberg, a new element, element 115. RODI HERZBERG: You take all the ingredients and then you throw them all together in a very controlled way.īRUMFIEL: If you've done your whisking, set the oven at just the right temperature. GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Rodi Herzberg says making super-heavy elements is just like baking.ĭR. But as NPR's Geoff Brumfiel reports, the researchers say even heavier elements may be just around the corner. Element 115 doesn't even have a name yet. Key properties Electronegativity Melting point Density. Scientists say they've created one of the heaviest chemical elements ever seen. Element 115, moscovium, has no uses as only a very few atoms of this element have been identified. Remember the periodic table from your school days? Well, it's still growing.
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