Livermorium
Livermorium is a synthetic superheavy element in group 16, below polonium, produced by an international collaboration between Russian and American research teams. It's named after Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, one of the institutions credited with its discovery. Every atom of livermorium ever detected has decayed away in a fraction of a second.
- Group · Period
- 16 · 7
- At room temp
- solid
- Melts at
- Not yet available
- Density
- Not yet available
- Discovered
- 2000
Uses
Livermorium has no practical, industrial or medical use, and its extreme rarity and instability mean it never will. Its significance lies purely in fundamental research — producing and studying it helps physicists test theories of nuclear stability at the far edge of the periodic table.
History
Livermorium was first synthesized in 2000 by a collaboration between the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States, who fused an accelerated beam of calcium nuclei with a curium target. It was named livermorium in honor of the Livermore laboratory’s contribution to the discovery, continuing a pattern of naming elements in this region of the periodic table after the institutions and places involved in their creation. The name was formally adopted by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry in 2012.
Fun facts
- Livermorium is named after Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, one of the two institutions credited with its discovery alongside the Dubna laboratory in Russia.
- Livermorium sits below polonium on the periodic table, in the same group as oxygen and sulfur, though its chemistry has never actually been observed.
- Livermorium's known isotopes decay within tens of milliseconds, among the shortest lifespans of any element on the periodic table.
Frequently asked questions
Does livermorium have any real-world use?
No — livermorium has no commercial, industrial or medical applications. It exists solely as a subject of fundamental physics research, produced only a handful of atoms at a time.
How is livermorium made?
Livermorium is produced by accelerating a beam of calcium nuclei and firing it at a curium target, so that the two nuclei occasionally fuse into a single livermorium nucleus. Each success is confirmed by the distinctive chain of radioactive decays the new atom produces.
Why is livermorium named after a laboratory rather than a person or place in Russia, where it was co-discovered?
Because the discovery was credited jointly to the Dubna laboratory in Russia and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the naming honored the American side of the collaboration — a counterpart to flerovium and moscovium, which were named for the Russian side of related discoveries.
Isotopes
5 known isotopes
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| Isotope | Natural abundance | Half-life | Decay mode | Mass excess | Binding energy / nucleon | Decay width |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lv-291 | — | 19 ms | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission (20%) | 187,244 keV | 7,116 keV | 2.40 × 10-14 eV |
| Lv-292 | — | 12.8 ms | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission (9%) | 188,133 keV | 7,116 keV | 3.56 × 10-14 eV |
| Lv-293 | — | 95 ms | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission (12.5%) | 190,568 keV | 7,111 keV | 4.80 × 10-15 eV |
Show all 5 isotopes
| Lv-290 | — | 8.3 ms | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission (8%) | 185,028 keV | 7,120 keV | 5.50 × 10-14 eV |
| Lv-294 | — | — | Unknown | — | — | — |