R esearchers from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, and from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, claimed in January that they had produced element 114. The news raised hopes in many quarters that this sighting, like the appearance of a shore bird after a long sea voyage, might be a harbinger of the long‐sought island of stability, a region populated by superheavy elements whose halflives might range up to hundreds or thousands of years. The reported atomic number of 114 is in the vicinity of the magic numbers associated with increased stability, according to most theoretical calculations. The alleged lifetime, while only 30 seconds, is still orders of magnitude greater than the halflives of isotopes produced to date in the atomic number range 109–112.
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April 1999
April 01 1999
Is the Island of Stability in Sight?
Will a single nucleus turn out to be just what its discoverers think it is—a relatively long‐lived isotope of element 114 lying in or near a region of very stable heavy nuclei?
Physics Today 52 (4), 21–22 (1999);