Scientefic discovery 2025: Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have announced a breakthrough in the creation of superheavy elements, as per a report.

Scientists Successfully Create Livermorium Using Titanium-50

Using a beam of titanium ions to bombard plutonium, the team successfully produced element 116, known as livermorium, in a more reliable way than before, as per a Popular Mechanics report. This achievement could help scientists inch closer to discovering the long-sought “island of stability”, a theorized group of superheavy elements that may hold isotopes that last far longer without decaying, as per the report.

For years, scientists have pushed the boundaries of the periodic table by smashing atoms together in particle accelerators, as per Popular Mechanics. Many of the heaviest elements don’t exist naturally on Earth because the conditions required to form them don’t happen outside specialized labs, as per the report. Instead, researchers rely on firing beams of particles at target atoms to fuse nuclei and create new elements, as per Popular Mechanics report.

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Why the Shift From Calcium-48 to Titanium-50?

Until now, the go-to method for making the heaviest elements, including element 118 (oganesson), involved using beams of calcium-48 particles, as per the Popular Mechanics report. Calcium-48, with its 20 protons and 28 neutrons, has been a reliable “starter” in these experiments, as per the report. But scientists have run into a roadblock: there are simply no suitable materials left to bombard with calcium-48 to reach even heavier elements like 119 or 120, as per the Popular Mechanics report. Targets like einsteinium or fermium, which are needed for these next steps, cannot be produced in enough quantity, as per the report.

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How the Titanium-50 Beam Experiment Worked

While the titanium-50 is a stable isotope, with 22 protons and 28 neutrons, it was used in the new experiment at Berkeley, as reported by Popular Mechanics. The researchers transformed titanium-50 oxide into a beam of ions and directed it at a thin foil of plutonium over 22 days, as per the report. The result was the successful creation of livermorium, proving that titanium beams can work where calcium beams have reached their limits, as per Popular Mechanics.

A New Era for Superheavy Element Discovery

The titanium 50 beam is proof of concept that can help find stable super heavy elements, scientists may be able to make much larger samples that can be subjected to more rigorous experimentation, as per the report. This finding will be helpful as elements have always had the capacity to surprise us, like mercury, which is a liquid metal at room temperature, bismuth, which always repels magnets, and copper, which is responsible for almost a rainbow of naturally occurring colors by itself, as per the Popular Mechanics report.

According to the report, the titanium 50 beam, or something similar inspired by it, could unearth the next half dozen elements, and one or more could be our stable holy grail.

FAQs

What is the "island of stability"?
It’s a theorized group of elements that may last longer and not decay as quickly as others.

What did the Berkeley Lab scientists do?
They created element 116, livermorium, using a titanium ion beam and plutonium.