Bohrium
Bohrium is a synthetic superheavy metal that exists only when physicists fuse two lighter nuclei together inside a particle accelerator — not a single atom of it has ever been found in nature. It sits in group 7 of the periodic table, directly below rhenium and manganese, so chemists expect it to share some of their chemical behavior. Every atom of bohrium made so far has decayed away within moments, making it one of the most fleeting substances humans have ever created.
- Group · Period
- 7 · 7
- At room temp
- solid
- Melts at
- Not yet available
- Density
- Not yet available
- Discovered
- 1976
Uses
Bohrium has no practical, industrial or medical use of any kind, and realistically never will — every atom of it decays away long before it could be gathered into a usable quantity, let alone built into a material or device. Its value is purely scientific: producing and studying bohrium helps physicists test theories of nuclear structure and probe how far the periodic table can be extended, part of the broader search for a theorized “island of stability” where longer-lived superheavy nuclei might exist.
History
Bohrium was first produced by fusing lighter nuclei together in a particle accelerator, with credit for its synthesis shared between research groups in the Soviet Union and, later, at the GSI Helmholtz Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, working across the late 1970s and early 1980s. Its existence was confirmed by detecting the distinctive radioactive decay chains produced by a handful of atoms. It was named bohrium in honor of Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist whose model of the atom shaped twentieth-century physics, with the name formally adopted by IUPAC in 1997 as part of a broader agreement that settled naming disputes across several of the heaviest known elements.
Fun facts
- Bohrium is named after Danish physicist Niels Bohr, one of the founding figures of modern atomic theory.
- Only a small number of bohrium atoms have ever been produced, one at a time, by smashing lighter nuclei together in a particle accelerator.
- Every known isotope of bohrium decays within a fraction of a second to a couple of seconds, so no one has ever seen or touched a visible sample of the element.
Frequently asked questions
Does bohrium have any practical or commercial use?
No — bohrium has no real-world applications. It's made purely for fundamental research into nuclear physics and the structure of the periodic table, a handful of atoms at a time, and decays long before it could ever be gathered or used for anything else.
How is bohrium made?
Bohrium is created by firing a beam of lighter nuclei, accelerated to enormous speed, at a target made of another element so that the two nuclei occasionally fuse into a single heavier one. It's an extraordinarily inefficient process — producing even a single atom of bohrium can take days of continuous bombardment.
Why does bohrium decay so quickly?
Like all superheavy elements, bohrium packs a huge number of protons into a small nucleus, and the electrical repulsion between them makes that nucleus intrinsically unstable. It falls apart through radioactive decay within a fraction of a second to a few seconds, depending on the isotope.
Isotopes
13 known isotopes
Swipe to see all columns →
| Isotope | Natural abundance | Half-life | Decay mode | Mass excess | Binding energy / nucleon | Decay width |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bh-270 | — | 1.0 m | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission | 124,230 keV | 7,301 keV | 7.60 × 10-18 eV |
| Bh-274 | — | 44 s | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission | 133,762 keV | 7,278 keV | 1.04 × 10-17 eV |
| Bh-278 | — | 19 m | Spontaneous fission (100%), Alpha decay (50%) | 144,370 keV | 7,251 keV | 4.00 × 10-19 eV |
Show all 13 isotopes
| Bh-260 | — | 35 ms | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission (18%), Electron capture (18%) | 113,123 keV | 7,314 keV | 1.30 × 10-14 eV |
| Bh-261 | — | 12 ms | Alpha decay (95%), Spontaneous fission (10%) | 113,079.41 keV | 7,317.33 keV | 3.80 × 10-14 eV |
| Bh-262 | — | 102 ms | Alpha decay (100%) | 114,252.12 keV | 7,315.73 keV | 4.47 × 10-15 eV |
| Bh-263 | — | — | Unknown | 114,496 keV | 7,318 keV | — |
| Bh-264 | — | 0.44 s | Alpha decay (100%) | 115,958 keV | 7,315 keV | 1.04 × 10-15 eV |
| Bh-265 | — | — | Unknown | 116,395 keV | 7,316 keV | — |
| Bh-266 | — | 2.1 s | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission | 118,104 keV | 7,313 keV | 2.17 × 10-16 eV |
| Bh-267 | — | 14 s | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission (8%) | 118,765 keV | 7,313 keV | 3.26 × 10-17 eV |
| Bh-271 | — | 1.5 s | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission (25%) | 125,859 keV | 7,298 keV | 3.04 × 10-16 eV |
| Bh-272 | — | 10.5 s | Alpha decay (100%) | 128,787 keV | 7,290 keV | 4.35 × 10-17 eV |