Element 110 created by fusing nickel and lead

Abstract

A team of European scientists has added another element to the periodic table with creation of three atoms of element 110 in a nuclear fusion experiment in Darmstadt, Germany. The 12 scientists detected the first atom on Nov. 9 after bombarding a lead target with nickel atoms for two days. Their two-week-long experiment, which ended last week, may also have created a fourth atom of the element. We detected three atoms for sure, but we are still looking at the tapes, says Peter Armbruster, head of the nuclear chemistry department at Gesellschaft fur Schwerionenforschung (GSI, Heavy Ion Research Center) in Darmstadt. The discovery team, led by Armbruster, consists of six GSI researchers and six guest scientists. The guests come from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia; the department of nuclear physics, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia; and the department of physics, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. The team submitted a paper on the Production and ...