2019-09-02 Bloomberg Businessweek

Berkeleyphysicist

EdwinMcMillan

discovered

element 93

Element 100 was a

byproductoftheIvy

Mikenucleartestin

thePacificOcean

Russianchemist

DmitriMendeleev,

inventorofthe

periodictable

Co-discoverers

AlbertGhiorso(left)

andJamesHarris

atBerkeley

Element 109 was

posthumously

namedforphysicist

LiseMeitner

Aparticlebeam

targetusedto

createnewelements

inDarmstadt

Physicist Kosuke

Moritaannouncing

the firstelement

discoveredinAsia

81

scientists picked through the raw data, they learned it had been

rigged to produce results. Ninov maintained that he never fal-

sified anything, but he was nonetheless fired in 2002. In the

years thereafter, scientists elsewhere discovered elements 113

through 118, and Gates traveled to Darmstadt to collaborate in

some element-hunting expeditions. But Berkeley launched no

searches of its own. “We kind of shied away from that,” she said.

“It could have been part of the fallout from the 118.”

Gates’s mendelevium experiment is typical of the kind of

research into known superheavies that Berkeley now con-

ducts. “Pretty much the only thing we know about these ele-

ments is how to produce them, and how long they live, and

how they decay,” she said. “What we don’t know is everything

else.” She fits her projects into the windows in the schedule

left by the cyclotron’s other main function: auditioning micro-

chips to see how well they withstand radiation before they’re

installed on satellites. The chip testing keeps the facility funded;

in May, Boeing, Blue Origin, and NASA had all paid for chunks

ofcyclotrontime.ThatwasthemandatefromtheDepartment

ofEnergy,Gatessaid.Evenif Berkeley’sscientistswishedto

pursuenewelements,it wouldbedifficulttocommandeerthe

particleacceleratorforlongenoughtoruntheirexperiments.

Enlargingtheperiodictablerequirestimeandmoney,

andscientistshavetobepreparedtoseebothresources

wasted.Inhisnewbook,Superheavy:MakingandBreaking

thePeriodicTable, KitChapman,a Britishsciencejournal-

ist,recountshowtheBerkeleyteamspenta monthtrying

to confirm GSI’s discovery of 112, running the cyclotron for

$50,000 a day, only to find that their magnets weren’t prop-

erly tuned. In the mid-2000s, Vanderbilt University physicist

Joseph Hamilton was working with a Russian team to syn-

thesize 117, traveling often to Dubna. They needed a berke-

lium target, so he turned to Oak Ridge National Laboratory

in Tennessee, which makes superheavies for commercial

and research purposes—actinium for cancer drugs, califor-

niumfortheoilindustry,plutoniumtopowerspacemis-

sions.Whatwouldit costtoprovideenoughberkeliumfor

theexperiment?Theestimate:$3.5million.

Hamilton waited instead for Oak Ridge to get a large order for

californium so he could buy the berkelium that would emerge

as a side product. “Every three months, for three and a half

years, I called them to ask if they’d had any orders,” Hamilton

says. The eventual price tag was still about $600,000. He wrote

a research grant for most of the cost, then offered a Berkeley lab

a buy-intotheexperimentfortheremaining$100,000.

HiromitsuHaba,a nuclearchemistatRiken,a researchinsti-

tuteinJapan,saysthattocreatejustthreeatomsofelement 112

overnineyearscost$3million in electricity bills, supplies, and

salaries. Riken is government-funded, but Haba’s team defrayed

the expense by pitching the prestige of the project to the com-

panies that supplied the hardware, giving them a chance to be

involved in an historic mission. (The companies offered dis-

counts or sponsored slices of the budget.) Until Riken ran down

its quarry and named it nihonium, Haba says, “out of the 100

ORIGINS OF THE ARTIFICIAL ELEMENTS

Discovered by ● Germany ● Italy ● Japan ● Russia ● U.S.

TENNESSINE

MOSCOVIUM

LIVERMORIUM

RUTHERFORDIUM FLEROVIUM

CALIFORNIUM

EINSTEINIUM

PROMETHIUM

AMERICIUM

CURIUM

NEPTUNIUM

TECHNETIUM

FERMIUM MENDELEVIUM DUBNIUM MEITNERIUM

HASSIUM

DARMSTADTIUM NIHONIUM

LAWRENCIUM

COPERNICIUM

1937 1950 1970 1990 2010

NEPTUNIUM,

DUBNIUM,

BERKELIUM:

COURTESY

LAWRENCE

BERKELEY

NATIONAL

LABORATORY

(3).

FERMIUM:

COURTESY

NATIONAL

NUCLEAR

SECURITY

ADMINISTRATION/NEVADA

SITE

OFFICE.

MEITNERIUM:

SMITHSONIAN

INSTITUTION

ARCHIVES.

DARMSTADTIUM, PLUTONIUM, SEABORGIUM: SCIENCE SOURCE

(3).

NIHONIUM:

FRANCK

ROBICHON/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK. BOHRIUM: A. ZSCHAU/GSI HELMHOLTZZENTRUM FUR SCHWERIONENFORSCHUNG. ROENTGENIUM: MICHAEL PROBST/AP PHOTO. OGANESSON: COURTESY LLNL.

DATA: ROYAL SOCIETY OF CHEMISTRY

Element 118 is

namedfor physicist

YuriOganessian

(left)

FormerGerman

ministerAnnette

Schavanatthe

namingceremony

Germanphysicists

celebratediscovering

bohrium(shortened

fromnielsbohrium)

Element 106

wasnamedafter

Berkeley’sGlenn

Seaborg

Apartialgathering

atBerkeley of

element102’s

co-discoverers

Ameasuringdevice

thatwas partofthe

184-inchcyclotron

atBerkeley

FatMan,thebomb

detonatedover

Nagasaki,contained

element 94

PLUTONIUM BERKELIUM NOBELIUM SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM ROENTGENIUM OGANESSON