Mysterious Element ‘Einsteinium’ Measured by Scientists For The First Time

MIKE MCRAE

Dragons lurk at the edges of the map of known elements – atomic giants so delicate, and so scarce, they defy easy study.

One such behemoth has finally given up at least some of its secrets, with chemists managing to gather just enough einsteinium to flesh out important details on the mysterious element’s chemistry and ability to form bonds.

For the better part of 70 years, isotopes of einsteinium have proven frustratingly difficult to study. Either they’re way too hard to make, or they have a half-life of less than a year, and what precious little is created begins to fall apart like a sandcastle at high tide.

The element’s behaviour is presumed to follow the patterns of its less robust peers in the actinide series. That much is clear. But due to its sheer size, strange relativistic effects make it harder to predict how it will react in certain chemical processes.

Usually, such confusion is easily cleared up by simply conducting a run of experiments.

The US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has finally scooped together enough of the stuff to do just that.

More informally referred to as the Berkeley Lab, the famous institute is already responsible for the discovery of a significant chunk of the upper bounds of the periodic table of elements.

A dozen of them were the work of nuclear physicist Albert Ghiorso, a life-long Berkeley researcher whose early career saw him develop radiation detectors as part of the Manhattan Project……More Here

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