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Re: island of stability ?



Ludwik,
Here is some more info on the story you are reporting. I got
this over the AIP Physics News Upadate listserve.


Sam Held


PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 412 January 27, 1999 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben
Stein

ELEMENT 114, representing the beachhead of what might be an
"island of stability" among heavy nuclei, has been successfully
created, according to scientists at Russia's Joint Institute for
Nuclear Research in Dubna. Artificially made elements heavier
than uranium are generally unstable, but theorists have for some
time thought that elements in the vicinity of number 114 and
above might well possess a configuration of neutrons and protons
that makes for longer life. The Dubna result seems to be evidence
for this. Made by shooting atoms of calcium-48 into a target of
plutonium-244, atoms of element 114 (with a nuclear weight of
289) were detected through their decay into element 112. The
lifetimes for elements 114 and 112 are 30 seconds and 280 msec,
respectively. Element 113 has not yet been discovered. (News
items in Science, 22 January 1999.)

-----Original Message-----
From: Ludwik Kowalski [mailto:KowalskiL@MAIL.MONTCLAIR.EDU]
Sent: Friday, January 29, 1999 4:30 AM
To: PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU
Subject: island of stability ?


According to The New York Times (1/29/99, page A16) a single atom
of Z=114 and N=184 was created in Dubna, Russia; it lived for 30
seconds. This happened when an isotope of Pu was bombarded with an
isotope of Ca, during a four-month period, in a big cyclotron. The
information was received by e-mail and, according to Ghiorsio,
"the 88-inch Berkeley cyclotron will be used to repeat the Dubna
experiment".