What It Takes to Discover an Element
Description
This book is a Weekend Pocketbook on Everything You Should Know About the Global Scientific Arms Race to Discover the next New Element, a journey to the far edge of the periodic table. Written in everyday language, we explore what it takes to create atoms that nature may barely allow to exist, and why the search for element 120 has become one of the most difficult quests in modern science.
What does it take to add one more square to the periodic table? We begin with the legacy of Dmitri Mendeleev's great map of matter, then move beyond uranium into the world of artificial elements, where scientists have already reached oganesson, element 118. So why has element 119 remained elusive? Why are researchers now pushing toward element 120, and why this search may bring us closer to the mysterious Island of Stability?
We explore the strange nuclear alchemy behind superheavy elements. We explore hot fusion, cold fusion, alpha decay chains, and the delicate evidence needed to prove that a new element briefly existed.
We then discuss the global race behind the science. Russia, Japan, Germany, the United States, and China are all pushing accelerator technology, rare isotope production, and detection systems to their limits. We explore the money, politics, prestige, and past controversies that make element discovery both a scientific achievement and an international competition.
And are we approaching the true end of chemistry, or the doorway to an entirely new class of matter?
