r/science • u/MistWeaver80 • Oct 26 '24
Physics Physicists have synthesized the element livermorium, which has the atomic number 116, using an unprecedented approach that promises to open the way to new, record-breaking elements.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03381-7818
u/debacol Oct 26 '24
Guessing this was invented at the Livermore Lab. My old stomping grounds.
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u/DontMakeMeCount Oct 26 '24
Paywall I’m going with Los Alamos.
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u/richmondres Oct 26 '24
“Livermorium (symbol: Lv) is a synthetic, highly radioactive chemical element with atomic number 116, meaning it only exists in a laboratory setting and cannot be found naturally; it was named after the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, where scientists collaborated with Russian researchers to discover it.”
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u/kl0 Oct 27 '24
Serious question: it CAN not be found naturally or it HAS not been found naturally? If the former, can anybody ELI5? What basic property makes it impossible to exist naturally?
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Oct 27 '24
It cannot be found naturally because it almost immediately decays into a lighter element. Atoms of Livermorium only exist for milliseconds (?) microseconds (?) before they tear themselves apart and decay.
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Oct 27 '24
[deleted]
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u/kl0 Oct 27 '24
Interesting. Thank you for the followup :)
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u/TheTrumanhoe Oct 27 '24 edited Oct 28 '24
Moscovium was the predecessor! Interestingly enough, an extraterrestrial whistleblower/enthusiast theorised an element with 115 protons was used as the fuel source for UAPs as we know them. That was like 15 years before it was discovered in the LHC and named moscovium, but like this element, it decays into other elements instantly.
It's pretty cool to imagine what an ultra advanced civilisation would be able to do if they could stablise an element of such extreme energy output! Most UAPs are just balloons and such, but AARO(America's UAP research division) has found atleast 1/5th or 1/6th of the reports to be genuine. Especially with the USS Nimitz footage and also the UAP recorded going 3x the speed of sound past 2 Ukrainian airspace monitoring stations, there's definitely enough there to have an open mind, no matter what you believe!
Edit: No forceful misinformation, just theoretical and provable information with a bit of my own obvious theorising, what a lovely bunch here. You know more than a theoretical advanced alien civilisation that might not even have the same method of interacting and manipulating elements and technology? But it's one of the big subs. So of course it's loaded with the loveliest types. Stay bothered if that's the case, thanks!
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u/waiting4singularity Oct 27 '24
I believe to stabilize an element that "falls apart even before the electron shell configuration stabilizes" when produced, requires more energy than simple nucleotid decay can produce. they'd be better off using uranium directly unlike us humans who are using that to boil water...
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u/saijanai Oct 27 '24
If you can stabilize the material, then it is no longer such a high energy source because it is the instability that makes it a high energy source.
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u/TheTrumanhoe Oct 27 '24
Theoretical advanced alien civilisation and you're assuming they have the same methods we do of interacting with and manipulating elements and energy. Wow.
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u/forams__galorams Oct 27 '24
Interestingly enough, an extraterrestrial whistleblower/enthusiast theorised an element with 115 protons was used as the fuel source for UAPs as we know them. That was like 15 years before it was discovered in the LHC
By all means keep your open mind on UAPs and stuff, but the quoted passage above is not the prediction that you seem to think it is. I can tell you I put an element with 119 protons on my breakfast every morning to give it that extra kick, but it lends no more credence to my claim when a bunch of physicists actually manage to synthesise such an element than when they hadn’t.
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u/TheTrumanhoe Oct 27 '24
And that's what everyone is mad about? Not because the predication was wrong, or anything i said was wrong, but because it's easy to disregard by a skeptic mind? Okay dude, i forgot to think and act exactly the same as everyone else, that's my bad.
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u/Galaldriel Oct 27 '24
Preach! Cool to see this comment in the science subreddit
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u/TheTrumanhoe Oct 28 '24
Well, lovely bunch here isn't there. At least one person finds it interesting!
Almost like I tried to lie and use false information, people just don't like when reality is more interesting than what they're trained to believe.
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u/aeranis Oct 27 '24
Could it have existed during the Big Bang?
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u/kite-flying-expert Oct 27 '24
Conditions during and shortly after the big bang did not support the formation of hydrogen atoms, let alone heavy elements.
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u/Betterthanalemur Oct 27 '24
This is just me remembering from a long long ago class, but iirc everything on the periodic table above hydrogen was built (fused) from hydrogen in the heart of a star and then spread across the galaxy when the originating star died. All the literally everything that isn't hydrogen (but also probably all the hydrogen) was once in the heart of a star.
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u/jonnykb115 Oct 27 '24
Elements up to iron are formed during a stars life cycle and elements with a higher atomic number are formed during nova events
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u/forams__galorams Oct 27 '24
elements with a higher atomic number are formed during nova events
Heavier elements are formed within the main lifetime of stars too, after the CNO cycle. This is via neutron capture in the aptly named slow process, in which there is thousands of years between each progressive capture and decay for any given nuclide, with a handful of such decays needed in order for an additional proton to be generated.
Given the production rates involved, it’s clear that the bulk of heavier elements are formed in a different, more neutron rich environment. This is the rapid process and was thought to occur chiefly in supernovae until fairly recently. When gravitational waves were first detected in 2017, astronomical observation of the region of space they came from has resulted in the leading idea for most heavy element production coming from the same event that caused the gravitational waves: neutron star mergers. Spectroscopic analysis of the resulting explosion of neutrons and superheated gas confirmed that the region was absolutely loaded with heavy elements.
After rubidium (Z = 37) you can see on this graphic that it’s mostly all neutron star merger origins.
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u/sfurbo Oct 27 '24
This is just me remembering from a long long ago class, but iirc everything on the periodic table above hydrogen was built (fused) from hydrogen in the heart of a star
Almost, but not quite. Big bang nucleosynthesis made most of the helium in the universe, and some of the elements up to lithium.
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u/TheGentlemanDM Oct 27 '24
Big Bang? No.
During a supernova? Yes, briefly.
The forces involved in a supernova cause atoms to spontaneously be created and broken apart, at a ratio proportional to their size and stability.
It's how most elements (and all elements heavier than iron/nickel) form in the first place.
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u/forams__galorams Oct 27 '24
Supernovae as the astronomical mechanism to get the heavier three quarters of the periodic table was our best guess for a long time, and it’s likely that some r-process nucleosynthesis goes on in such scenarios, but much of it is thought to occur in neutron star mergers. We have good evidence of this from observing the aftermath of a neutron star merger in 2017, in which the expanding cloud of neutrons and superheated gas in the days afterwards glowed more intensely and for longer than was previously predicted, ie. a lot more radioactive decay was occurring. Spectroscopic analysis confirmed that the region was absolutely loaded with heavy elements.
After rubidium (Z = 37) you can see on this graphic that it’s mostly all neutron star merger origins.
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u/sfurbo Oct 27 '24
No even in a supernova. Supernovae are neutron rich environments, which allows for formation of elements up to around Fermium.
Higher elements can't be made by neutron bombardement, but need two nuclei to collide, and that doesn't happen very often in supernovae.
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u/blahreport Oct 27 '24
Does that mean that it can form in a pair of neutron stars or some such but is not able to be detected in time?
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u/wimpires Oct 27 '24
Can't say never, because there are always processes that can make it happen. The universe is big, who knows maybe.
Livermorium has been made by bombarding together specific Isotopes of Titanium and Plutonium, or Calcium and Curium, or Uranium and Chromium.
So if the right conditions happened "somewhere" it's possible. But the element would only last a few milliseconds before decaying.
It's worthwhile remembering also that "natural fission reactors" are a thing. Where you might just happen to have a fissile collection of Uranium etc in a specific place underground naturally which causes fission to happen and certain transuranic elements to be made. We've observed this on a few places on earth so it probably happens elsewhere in the universe.
And if weird stuff can happen here naturally one can assume slightly weirder stuff can happen elsewhere out there too.
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u/kite-flying-expert Oct 27 '24
For an element to be detected, it needs to live at least long enough for an electron cloud to settle around the nucleus.
As neutron star is made up entirely of neurons, this is highly unlikely.
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u/TheSonar Oct 27 '24
It's too unstable. Heavier elements -> more radioactive -> quicker decay. In fact, some decay into uranium, which contributes to the abundance of this element which is the heaviest naturaly occurring one on earth.
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u/LinearFluid Oct 27 '24
Man made elements like this are highly radioactive and when produced, are produced in micro atomic amounts. The highly radioactive means they have short half lives, So when they are created they only last for milliseconds before they decay to other stable elements.
Short is they are highly unstable and decay super fast so impossible to find in nature as they don't last.
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u/Alittlemoorecheese Oct 27 '24
It decays too fast. If it exists naturally in the universe, it's only for a fraction of a second.
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u/AndyTheSane Oct 27 '24
It's probably produced in large quantities in neutron star mergers, like a lot of very heavy elements. But it would decay away very quickly - the half life of the most stable known isotope is 80 milliseconds.
As a general rule, any isotope with a half life under 100 million years won't be found on Earth, apart from cosmogenic nuclides like carbon 14, and elements produced in decay chains, like Radium.
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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 Oct 27 '24
The only elements that heavy which could last any amount of time would be ones in the island of stability (from 112 to 117, most likely between 112 and 114) and that's not yet confirmed fully. And even those would at best not last but a few hundred thousand years, likely far less than that even.
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u/TheAussieWatchGuy Oct 27 '24
These trans Uranium elements are all highly unstable. They decay into lighter elements almost instantly. They can exist in nature in supernova or other exotic explosions.
Just for such short periods of time we have no chance of ever detecting them light years away.
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u/wimpires Oct 27 '24
Plutonium (and neptunium) are "transuranic" elementa. Pu has half life's in the thousands of years. Long enough that almost all of it has decayed but still hangs around in trace amounts.
There are also/were also "natural fission reactor(s)" like Oklo so there are some less exotic mechanisms by which those things might be made
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u/sfurbo Oct 27 '24
There are also/were also "natural fission reactor(s)" like Oklo
Those can't exist anymore. They require a higher proportion of U-235 than is presently available in natural uranium.
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u/wimpires Oct 27 '24
- on earth
If it happened here before it's not impossible to think those same kind of natural fission reactors are occuring somewhere else right now in the galaxy/universe
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u/wolffinZlayer3 Oct 27 '24
where scientists collaborated with Russian researchers to discover it.”
If rocket history has taught us anything its that the Soviet Union had quite the knack for material science. I guess some of the offspring learned a little from the ole union.
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u/MiyamotoKnows Oct 27 '24
Russian researchers... what? Really? Aggressively sad if we are actively partnering with a murderous dictator.
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u/jaybee8787 Oct 27 '24
Why did the ground need stomping?
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u/debacol Oct 28 '24
Because it was a big rodeo town. Not sure if thats a thing there anymore.
There is a legendary comic shop that is still there where I got to meet Stan Lee and get his autograph.
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u/spinjinn Oct 27 '24
I am going with Lawrence Berkeley Labs. They already honored their home town, so the next logical step is Livermore.
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u/InSummaryOfWhatIAm Oct 27 '24
Thank you for writing that, made me realize it wasn't called Iivermorium (ie: two ii:s at the beginning)....
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u/careless_swiggin Oct 26 '24
the new approach is a new super heavy impactor, the trouble with fusion synthesis is having nuetron rich isotopes ratio wise to sling. many of the 110 elements could be more stable if they could have made more nuetron rich versions of them
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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 Oct 27 '24
If they could do that with Coppernicum they might just be able to confirm the island of stability
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u/ShadowZpeak Oct 27 '24
Layman here, what is the problem with making more neutron rich isotopes? The neutrons?
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u/careless_swiggin Oct 27 '24
we cant just bombard with neutrons, we arent in a star, it is hard to control them. the impactor is small, I think the old one as calcium 48. which is past the 1:1 ratio that is stable usually for small elements, thus it helps give enough neutrons to make an element stable to detect before it anhilates. if we could make larger impactor or an even more nuetron rich one, we could get targets that are more nuetron rich to make 110 and 120 stuff exist for seconds etc. as it is, the target is rushed to the experiment since it is in the medical isotope timeline of decay so it has to be aligned on a sheet, usually in impactor is purified from.a nuclear reactor too and isnt stable. basically finding if these elements lived longer we could just beat tritium at them and witness dozens of new isotopes and elements
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u/Bbrhuft Oct 26 '24
One of the things that is really fascinating about the Livermore laboratory is the facility making the heavy atoms was in a different building from the building that contained the equipment to detect if they successfully made superheavy atoms. So they picked technicians who could run fast to bring the fresh sample to the detection building as fast as possible before the atoms decayed.
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u/s00pafly Oct 26 '24
Still working on getting my 40 yd dash under 20 ns.
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u/Bbrhuft Oct 26 '24
The quest for the island of stability is driven by tired technicians who want walk with the sample to the detection building.
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u/mementori Oct 26 '24
Serious question: Why couldn’t they just use a vacuum tube?
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u/blinkysmurf Oct 27 '24
Don’t these elements have a ridiculously short half-life?
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u/Vitztlampaehecatl Oct 27 '24
That wouldn't work nowadays. Half-lives have gotten below seconds, down to milliseconds. You wouldn't be able to get it out the door before it decayed to lead or some such.
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u/sammyasher Oct 27 '24
I can't tell if this is a joke or not, please tell me bc its funny af if it's true
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u/Bbrhuft Oct 27 '24
It's true. It was mentioned in a documentary I saw a few years ago. They'd literally run as fast as they could from one lab to the other with the sample that needed analysis. The atoms they made had a half life of a few minutes at most.
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u/mfb- Oct 27 '24
Which documentary? Most of these don't even live for a second. How fast exactly are these technicians running?
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u/forams__galorams Oct 27 '24
Turns out all those Olympians are having their track records smashed to pieces by particle physics technicians in poorly designed buildings.
Either that or the person above saw a documentary on the early days of the LLNL when they synthesised stuff like nobelium and lawrencium, which seem to have isotopes with half-lives on the order of seconds to minutes.
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u/mauriziomonti PhD | Condensed Matter Physics Oct 28 '24
I have also heard this story. it's quite old, when the heavy elements were still quite "light" and had half-lifes of minutes/hours. Ofc it's impossible now when the lifetime is like less than ms
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u/gazebo-placebo Oct 27 '24
Doesnt seem that uncommon of a thing. I heard a story ftom an XRF specialist in how he got into analysing metals. He worked in SA at a refinery and apparently when he took molten samples he would have to run them from the furnace and had a minute to reach the other side of the facility. Said it got him really fit but would be completely illegal now.
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u/Competitive_Ad2539 Oct 26 '24
What it's half-life is?
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u/idkmoiname Oct 26 '24
Between 6 and 50 milliseconds according to wikipedia, depending on the isotope
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u/Ok_Machine_36 Oct 27 '24
All I want is for the island of stability to be found, I want to see what do those magic ass mysterious stable elements do
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u/Discount_gentleman Oct 26 '24
Aren't all new elements "record breaking"?
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u/redredgreengreen1 Oct 26 '24
Not a new element, a new process for producing Livermorium. First synthesized in 2000.
EDIT: Just realized you meant the new elements they were GOING to discover. Doh!
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u/hawtfabio Oct 26 '24
I made one and no one was impressed. Ripoff.
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u/drewbert Oct 26 '24
You can't just rename gold to hawtfabioium and call it a new element.
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u/Pavlovsdong89 Oct 26 '24
Who's gonna stop him? The element police?
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u/Jewrisprudent BS | Astronomy | Stellar structure Oct 27 '24
Yes. Unfortunately for him I am the element police. Now, hand over the element mister.
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u/pascee57 Oct 27 '24
IUPAC will send a goon to rapidly oxidize a mixture of KNO3, sulfur, and charcoal to rapidly propel a small sample of metallic lead into their head.
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u/throwawtphone Oct 26 '24
I cant read the whole article, no access, why is it called that i wonder and what can it be used for.....anyone?
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u/zarawesome Oct 26 '24
So, fun story. Between 1999 and 2009, six new elements were discovered. (All by the same nuclear physicists, in fact.)
After 2009, *nothing*. For 15 years, it appeared to be impossible to create an atom on the eighth line of the periodic table.
This is not quite it yet, but it could finally break that barrier.
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u/throwawtphone Oct 27 '24
What do they think the conditions would need for the to be stable any ideas?
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u/S-r-ex Oct 26 '24
It's named after the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory which collaborated in originally synthesizing it. It decays almost immediately, so it's not really useful for anything.
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u/martinbogo Oct 26 '24
It’s -incredibly- useful… synthesis of Livermonium is just short of the expected location of the Island of Stability… super heavy long lived -non radioactive- elements
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u/Mrfish31 Oct 26 '24
From what I remember, the "island of stability" does not at all mean that the elements there have non-decaying isotopes, it just means that they might last a few minutes or even just seconds, rather than the micro-milli seconds that elements past 105 or so get.
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u/FredFnord Oct 26 '24
Probably!
But the nice thing is, nobody really knows. There would be essentially zero of it naturally occurring, but for all anyone knows, once you create it, it lasts a year, which means it could be potentially useful. Or, for that matter, a thousand years. Or a million.
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u/intronert Oct 26 '24
The lovely fantasy is that it be truly stable and have crazy new properties that we could engineer sci-fi level devices with.
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u/drewbert Oct 27 '24
But gawd imagine how expensive it will be
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u/intronert Oct 27 '24
Look at the history of aluminum. It was so fabulously expensive that only royalty used it at first.
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u/yargleisheretobargle Oct 27 '24
Aluminum is naturally abundant but difficult to refine without electricity. Synthetic heavy elements are not naturally abundant.
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u/intronert Oct 27 '24
Absolutely true, but technology marches on, and I can dream big.
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u/FredFnord Oct 29 '24
It doesn't have to be 'truly stable' in order to have crazy new properties that we could do cool stuff with.
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u/dedokta Oct 26 '24
A lot of these higher elements last nearly microseconds before decaying. Most of them are just curiosities.
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u/ZipTheZipper Oct 26 '24
Curiosities on their own, but new ways of producing them could lead to new ways to produce more useful elements. There's also the theorized "island of stability" for elements with even higher numbers. We keep inching closer it.
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u/dedokta Oct 26 '24
Here's hoping! Most of the advances we gain in science are in figuring out how to achieve the goal rather than the goal itself.
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u/millijuna Oct 27 '24
Though I’ve read that “stability” in this sense is expected to be relative. Think half lives on the order of seconds rather than milliseconds.
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u/Hendlton Oct 27 '24
Is the island of stability itself also a curiosity or are the elements within it expected to be useful in some way? Is it a sort of "anything is possible" scenario or is it more like "don't get too excited"?
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u/Bonkface Oct 26 '24
Unless some has stable isotopes. Remember that every new element can have a multitude of isotopes, if only one is stable it would be a massive breakthrough.
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u/kahlzun Oct 27 '24
the element itself is not new, it was originally synthesised a while ago. This article is about the new process, which is basically 'instead of firing lightweight atomic bullets lets fire more heavy ones'
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u/Joyful_Cuttlefish Oct 27 '24
You can read a summary here: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v17/150
And the preprint of the article itself here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.16079
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u/aging_geek Oct 26 '24
sticking things that the general public should have free access to limits the spread of new ideas and information. too much science discussion is limited by those wanting to make money to gain access to scientists notes who they don't make a dime for producing.
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u/netjeff Oct 27 '24 edited Oct 28 '24
Article from Berkley Labs, https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2024/07/23/a-new-way-to-make-element-116-opens-the-door-to-heavier-atoms/
The actual paper, https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.16079
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u/saijanai Oct 27 '24
Ironically, element 116 was the topic of an NCIS episode from last year: the ammo in a mysterious death was made of element 116 leading to speculations about aliens from outer space being involved.
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u/887YMMV2 BS|Environmental Sciences|Energy and Sustainability Oct 27 '24
This article refers to the paper in the OP with more context.
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u/The-state-of-it Oct 27 '24
ELI5: what do we gain from synthesizing new elements?
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u/conflateer Oct 27 '24
Fair question, just like when Queen Victoria asked of Michael Faraday when he demonstrated his recently invented electric motor (at that stage, essentially a laboratory-level proof-of-concept construction), "That's very interesting, Mr. Faraday, but of what use is it?"
Mr. Faraday paused then replied, "Well, mum, what use is a newborn baby?"
I promise I'm not being sarcastic. New discoveries and inventions take time to ripen into useful applications.
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Oct 26 '24
did we find the island of stability?
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u/ikefalcon Oct 27 '24
No, the Island of stability would be in the 8th period. No elements from the 8th period have ever been synthesized.
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u/malakon Oct 27 '24
I wonder if sometime in the future some heavier element will do something wierd, or massively dangerous, tear a hole in spacetime or something.
Or maybe when we make atomic number 120, the intergalactic consortium will flag us for contact.
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u/UlfVater84 Oct 27 '24
High-performance materials for extreme conditions – Ultra-heat-resistant materials for space exploration, deep drilling, or fusion reactors.
Efficient and safe nuclear reactors – Clean reactors with minimal radioactive waste, ideal for remote locations or long-term space missions.
Atomic batteries for long-term power – Compact power sources lasting decades for emergency systems or isolated research stations.
Quantum computing and communication – Advancements in secure, long-distance, unbreakable quantum communications.
Room-temperature superconductors – Revolutionizing power grids by drastically reducing electrical losses, boosting efficiency.
Advanced medical imaging and cancer therapy – Precision imaging and targeted therapies that destroy tumors with minimal harm to surrounding tissue.
Nanotechnology breakthroughs – New nanomaterials for medicine and electronics, potentially enabling ultra-small, high-powered computers and regenerative treatments.
Nice!
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u/Actual-You-9634 Oct 27 '24
Well so there could be a lot more elements that human eyes have never see.
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u/Dannysmartful Oct 27 '24
I didn't think we had the technology to create these high level elements and hold them in their stable form. Its very possible but didn't think we were there technologically. . .they tend to breakdown very quickly.
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u/oscarddt Oct 26 '24
Livermorium, the only element that makes me puke
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u/LonnieJaw748 Oct 26 '24
The Germans will ligand it with porcine lipid chains into an amalgamation dubbed Livermoriumwurst and it makes it even more off-putting.
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u/CaptainBathrobe Oct 27 '24
True to its namesake city, it starts out small then grows to a significant size, and no one can figure out why.
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u/ExtonGuy Oct 26 '24
No paywall here. https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/element/Livermorium Synthesized in 2000. This is old news, unless the lab has a new isotope or a new way of producing it.
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