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BloombergBusinessweek/SEPTEMBER2,2019THEELEMENTSS
o hereweare,attheedgeofchemistry:atomicNo.118,
oganesson, the coda of the periodic table as itstandsand
the spot where questions of science shade intothoseof
philosophy. Is an element really an element if it existsnowhere
in nature—if it can be engineered only in a lab for afractionof
a second before it blinks out of existence? Is “discovery”the
right word for such a feat? How far can scientistsextendthe
table by mashing lighter elements into each othertocreate
heavier ones? Is it even worth the time and troubletodoit just
to add a square?
One place to find answers to these questions is onCyclotron
Road, a calf-busting walk up a hill above the Universityof
California at Berkeley campus. For decades, theLawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory’s tremendous accelerators—
whichhostedwithintheirgutsthecollisionsandcombina-
tionsofhigh-energyparticles—produceda paradeofelements
theworldhadneverknown: 15 of them, includingeveryele-
ment save one from atomic No. 93 through 106. Theycameto
be called superheavies, though this was always animprecise
term, referring variously to elements above 92, orabove100,
or above 103.
Even in their nomenclature, Berkeley corneredtheglory.
Two superheavies were called lawrencium and seaborgium,
named after Ernest Lawrence and Glenn Seaborg,Berkeley’s
titans of nuclear physics, who’d built the university’sacceler-
ators and deployed them to study the heaviest elementsofthe
periodic table. Two others were called californiumandberke-
lium, prompting a New Yorker wisecrack that, bynotnaming
another pair “universitium” and “ofium,” Berkeleyhadsquan-
dered its chance at true immortality.
But then the parade stopped. The last new elementsynthe-
sized at Berkeley was seaborgium in 1974. Announcementsof
fresh superheavy discoveries were now made by labsinDubna,
Russia; Darmstadt, Germany; and Saitama, Japan.Thescience
changed, and it seemed as if Berkeley wasn’t eventryingto
catch up. The expense of making elements climbedintothemil-
lions of dollars—money that could never be recouped,because
most superheavies don’t remain stable long enoughtobecom-
mercially viable. Funding withered away; once, whilebuilding
an ion separator out of spare parts, scientists fashioneda valve
out of a mousetrap spring. Some of the university’saccelera-
tors were decommissioned. One was replaced by aparkinglot.
In the late 1990s a Berkeley team pushed onefinaltime
beyond the boundary of the periodic table, evendeclared
that it had stumbled upon 118—only for the data tobeexposed
as one man’s scientific fraud. And that was that. Itsscientists
joined others pursuing new elements elsewhere,butintheir
own particle accelerators, they applied themselvesonlyto
investigating the known superheavies. Among thehalf-dozen
or so major institutions engaged in this work, Berkeleyalone
has decided to stop chasing the tail of the table altogether.N
othing in science is the same blend of mundanearith-
metic and mystical alchemy as the manufactureofnew
elements. The protons in an atom’s nucleusdetermine
its atomic number and thus its identity as an element.Melding
the atoms of different elements will produce aheavierele-
ment, its atomic number predictably just the sumofthoseof
the lighter ingredients. To synthesize seaborgium (106protons),youmightfusechromium(24protons)withlead(82protons)or
oxygen(8protons)withcalifornium(98protons).A firstgrader
coulddothosesums.Shemightnotknow,though,thatunit-
ingtwoatomsofiodine(53protons) or other elements of sim-
ilar size requires unachievable power, or that it’s best to use a
lighter atom as a missile trained upon a heavier target. To deter-
mine which reaction has the healthiest chance of success, and
to calculate the speeds at which the atoms must collide, and
to then rev up a particle accelerator and establish those condi-
tions of screaming energy and infinitesimal precision, and to
thus forge an element that’s never appeared in the history of
the universe, or has perhaps only briefly materialized in the
core of a distant star—that feels like an act of cosmic creation.
There’sstilla particleacceleratoratBerkeleythatdates
totheheydayofitssearchfornewelements:a cyclotron
witha chamber 88 inches in diameter, built in 1962 and set
deepwithina buildingon1 CyclotronRd.Berkeleyonlyman-
agesthecyclotron.It’salwaysbeenthepropertyoftheU.S.
government—first of the Atomic Energy Commission and then
of its successor, the Department of Energy. Anyone who wants
to meet Jacklyn Gates must make an appointment, present an
ID to the guards manning the boom gate across the road, walk
to the door of the building, call her on a house phone, and
wait for her to come down and open the door.
As a staff scientist in the heavy-element chemistry program,
Gates uses the cyclotron as her chief instrument, designing tests
andrunningthemforweeks.I visitedherinMay,thedaybefore
thecyclotronwasgoingtobebootedupfora weekanda half
ofexperimentsonmendelevium,element101.A heliumion,
withitstwoprotonsandtwoneutrons,wouldbefiredata nib-
bleofeinsteinium(element99)smearedonmetalfoil,andthe
twowouldthencombineintoanyofthe 16 isotopesofmen-
delevium.Theisotopesallhold 101 protons, but their atomic
masses differ because they have varying numbers of neutrons.
“We’re looking at a couple of different isotopes to see whether
ornottheirmasseshavebeenproperlyassigned,”Gatessaid.
Sheledmethrough10-foot-thickconcretewallsintothe
steampunk heart of the cyclotron: wires and tubes and display
lights everywhere, pipes leading from chamber to chamber,
giant magnets to accelerate the ions to a third of the speed of
light and then to bend and guide them toward their targets.
The air was filled with a constant, almighty whirring.
Gates came to Berkeley for a Ph.D. in 2004, so she missed
the fraud scandal that exploded in the late ’90s. Victor Ninov,
a Bulgarian scientist who’d helped find elements 110, 111, and
112 at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in
Darmstadt, had been hired away by Berkeley in 1996 to be a
shining talent in the team’s renewed quest for new elements.
The university had acquired a sophisticated separator, an appa-
ratus to pick out the stray superheavy atom formed amid the
trillions of particles tearing around in an experiment. Ninov
codedsoftwaretoanalyzethedataspillingoutofthecyclotron,
andin1999,aftera projectofbombardinga leadtargetwith
krypton,hisprogramrevealedtheformationofelement118.
Berkeley made the announcement in jubilation; it signaled
a return to the fruitful years of Lawrence and Seaborg. The
International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry (IUPAC),
which vets such findings, waited for further confirmations, but
other labs failed to replicate the experiment. When Berkeley’s