Did you make
Oganesson in this reactor?
This is a really historic relic.
This is from the time that the institute moved to here to Dubna, and
What's really interesting is to look at the heaviest element which is number 104 which in that time in Russia was called...
... What was the name?
Kurch...?
Kurchatovium.
The heaviest element was number
104 which was called Kurchatovium.
It's now called Rutherfordium
Yes, and I really like to see this: an old
periodic table and the fact that it's radioactive
nearby, and you can't even go near it is really exciting. Of course, I'm next to Yuri
Oganessian, the
personification of element
118, the heaviest element, Oganesson. So what a better combination could one have?
We're now on the top of the accelerator that was used to make the super-heavy elements
including Oganesson. And
This is the place where the projectile, the calcium 48
was injected
into the
accelerator.
The calcium is in a little oven
inside here at 600 degrees Centigrade.
And it comes in and you're using about one milligram each hour
we were told.
The Calcium ion goes about
five or six meters altogether from here 'til it gets into the
accelerator. Then they speed it up the tenth of the speed of light, and then they go off down
the Beam Line
into the
chamber where the target is.
And the beam line is designed so you get the maximum number of calcium ions to go through it.
So the real exciting thing...
is that none of this has been shown before on video.
So you're the first to see it.
So we're now in the area where the elements are created.
So the big
accelerator, the cyclotron, is behind that wall and
the ions come down this pipe.
The key part now is the target.
The target,
which is irradiated
where the two atoms come together
and fuse
to make the new element. but first of all let's look at the Target
This is the wheel for the target.
This target is titanium foil, one and a half microns?
Exactly.
And then you put a layer of berkelium or some other metal.
Does the beam go through the titanium first?
Yes.
So the beam goes through the titanium and then on to
the berkelium layer which is
free so that any ions or atoms that have formed can go straight out without any hindrance.
The wheel is going around really fast!
Much faster than a CD
and it's going round very rapidly so that no
particular spots on the target heats up too much because of the energy of the beam.
This is...
a target of windows of titanium that separates the high vacuum of the cyclotron
from the hydrogen atmosphere
that is around the target itself. You can see that the beam really eats into the window
So it gives this bright purple color, but if you look at the new set of windows, they're clean and silver.
This is where the elements are born.
You have to imagine the target that we've just seen
inside here
But in a box.
The plastic outside is a sort of fume cupboard to pump away any radioactive
gas or anything like that. The inside is the rapidly rotating
target. Every so often - and it's really quite rare - one of the atoms of the new element is formed,
and then that atom starts off down this tube towards the detector.
This is the place where we
detect the new elements and it's the end of the journey for the atom.
So the atom comes down this tube and
into the detector here.
The detector is a solid plate,
and the atom hits it and sits in the solid
and its decay is detected electrically
and
by watching how the element decays, you can then get evidence
what it is, because you can see it forming daughter and granddaughter and
Great-granddaughter elements and all of those are elements that are already known
So you can then work out that you've really got a new element.
And the decay is nearly always by
emission of alpha particles, so doubly charged
helium nucleus.
It's really very moving being here because in this apparatus
six new elements were created
and
Yuri Oganessian explained to me that they just put this together with pieces that they had round the lab
and it wasn't something that was specially built.
They assembled it and it's been running for 7,000 hours every year
for many many years and produced six elements.
still have plenty left in the final nucleus
and calcium 48 has been the absolute
key to the success of these synthesis of these super-heavy elements in Dubna