How superheavy chemistry could rearrange the periodic table

The researchers directly observed the heaviest atom which participated in a chemical reaction and forming a molecule. The discovery pushes “super -revalent” chemistry, which involves extremely massive radioactive elements, at a new level – and could even lead to rearrangement of the periodic table.

Certain exotic chemical elements are difficult to experiment, which makes it difficult to determine their appropriate placement in the periodic table. For example, the copernicon radioactive element is placed among a group called transition metals, but it behaves more like noble gases, which belong to a different section.

This problem can also affect the elements of the table, heavy and radioactive atoms called Actinides, explains Jennifer Pore at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. To verify the properties of actinids, she and her colleagues made a chemical reaction which created a molecule containing the heaviest actinid, Nobelium, which is element 102.

To make the element, the researchers used an accelerator of particles which broke a beam of very energetic calcium atoms in a piece of lead. The atoms of nobélium emerged the day after this collision and reacted with nitrogen and water molecules in the air. A rapid action detector, similar to a particle detection machine called mass spectrometer, then identified the molecules resulting more precisely than in any past attempt to make super-revocated chemistry.

Then the team recommended their experience with a piece of thulium instead of lead. This created an actinid called Actinium, which is element 89. Comparative how easy it was for water to stick to Actinium against Nobélium, the researchers confirmed that the two elements behave quite also to belong to the same row of the periodic table.

Nobelium is not only properly placed on the periodic table; It has also become the heaviest element that researchers have directly observed the formation of a new molecule – although the heaviest element ever created is always Oganesson, element 118. And the procedure used to create molecules which contain nobelium, then identify them with precision, could lead to new breakthroughs.

Sophia Heinz at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Germany claims that the new experience is a real technical advance for superhero chemistry. Molecules containing heavier elements that the nobelium had been manufactured before, but the researchers could never identify them directly, she said. “The possibility of studying unique molecules directly is an important step forward.”

Peter Schwerdtfeger at Massey University in New Zealand says that the new experience “opens the door to many other future experiences with different superheroes”.

Even before new experiences are completed, the results have an impact. Pore and his team thought they should add additional molecules in the experience for Actinium and Nobelium with whom to react. Unexpectedly, however, the superhaisons reacted with substances already present. Anastasia Borschevsky at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands says that it could force scientists to re-examine previous experiences on overheating in which researchers assumed that they were looking at atoms-because they may also have observed molecules that contained these atoms. “This will occupy the theorists for a while,” says Schwdtfeger.

For pores, the next challenge is to do chemistry with even heavier elements, such as Dubnium, which is element 105. To do this, the team may have to speed up their procedure because the heavier elements get, the less time they spend in a stable state before decomposing in a different element.

“If things are going well, we want to do the biggest guys at the end [of the periodic table]. We don’t have one [heaviness] Limits with this technique, ”explains Pore. And unlike Nobelium, some of these larger elements may end up finding new places on the periodic table.