Copernicium
Copernicium is a synthetic superheavy metal created only in particle accelerators, with no natural source on Earth. It sits in group 12 of the periodic table, directly below mercury, and — like mercury — some theoretical work suggests it could be an unusually volatile metal, though that remains a prediction rather than an observation, since only individual atoms of it have ever existed. It's named after the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.
- Group · Period
- 12 · 7
- At room temp
- solid
- Melts at
- Not yet available
- Density
- Not yet available
- Discovered
- 1996
Uses
Copernicium has no practical, industrial or medical use, and its extreme rarity and instability mean it never will. Its significance is entirely scientific: producing and studying it helps physicists test predictions about superheavy nuclei and probe the theorized “island of stability,” a region of the chart of nuclides where longer-lived superheavy atoms might exist.
History
Copernicium was first synthesized in 1996 by researchers at the GSI Helmholtz Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, who fused accelerated zinc nuclei with a lead target and confirmed the element’s existence through the radioactive decay chains of the atoms produced. It was named copernicium in honor of Nicolaus Copernicus, marking the five-hundredth anniversary of ideas central to his astronomical work. The name was formally adopted by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry in 2010.
Fun facts
- Copernicium is named after Nicolaus Copernicus, the astronomer whose model of the solar system placed the Sun, rather than the Earth, at the center.
- Copernicium sits directly below mercury on the periodic table; some theoretical studies predict it may be unusually volatile for a metal, though this has never been tested since only single atoms have ever been made.
- The most stable known isotope of copernicium survives for only tens of seconds — unusually long by superheavy-element standards, but still far too brief to isolate a visible sample.
Frequently asked questions
Does copernicium have any real-world use?
No — copernicium has no commercial, industrial or medical applications. It exists purely as a subject of fundamental physics research, produced only a handful of atoms at a time.
How is copernicium made?
Copernicium is produced by accelerating a beam of zinc nuclei and firing it at a lead target, so that the two nuclei occasionally fuse into a single copernicium nucleus. Each successful fusion is confirmed by tracking the specific chain of radioactive decays that follows.
Why is copernicium's physical state uncertain?
Because every atom of copernicium ever created has existed alone and decayed within seconds to minutes, chemists have never had enough of it in one place to observe its bulk properties directly. What's known comes from theoretical calculations based on its position in the periodic table, not direct measurement.
Isotopes
7 known isotopes
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| Isotope | Natural abundance | Half-life | Decay mode | Mass excess | Binding energy / nucleon | Decay width |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cn-283 | — | 4.6 s | Alpha decay (85%), Spontaneous fission (15%) | 161,337 keV | 7,192 keV | 9.92 × 10-17 eV |
| Cn-285 | — | 33 s | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission (6%) | 165,086 keV | 7,185 keV | 1.38 × 10-17 eV |
| Cn-286 | — | 11 m | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission (50%) | 166,450 keV | 7,183 keV | 6.91 × 10-19 eV |
Show all 7 isotopes
| Cn-277 | — | 0.61 ms | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission (17%) | 152,332 keV | 7,205 keV | 7.48 × 10-13 eV |
| Cn-281 | — | 0.18 s | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission (12.5%) | 157,947 keV | 7,197 keV | 2.53 × 10-15 eV |
| Cn-282 | — | 0.96 ms | Spontaneous fission (100%), Alpha decay (7%) | 158,826 keV | 7,197 keV | 4.75 × 10-13 eV |
| Cn-284 | — | 108 ms | Spontaneous fission (100%), Alpha decay (3%) | 162,415 keV | 7,191 keV | 4.22 × 10-15 eV |