Word: berkelium
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...atoms may seem minuscule--especially if they exist for only fractions of a second--but they can have huge implications. The recent announcement that Russian and American scientists finally managed to produce a tiny bit of element 117 by firing calcium atoms (element 20) at berkelium (element 97) fills in a missing spot on the periodic table. When the results are confirmed, "ununseptium" will get a catchier moniker and occupy the square between 116 and 118--elements that also await proper names from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry...
...they're radioactive, and decay so quickly that there's none left on Earth, or, as far as we know, in space. Or there wasn't, rather, until physicists armed with cyclotrons began making them during World War II creating such exotic substances as Americium (94 protons), Curium (96), Berkelium (97). The more protons (and neutrons, which tend to add up even faster), the harder it is to make a new element-but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying...
...with it, the key to the atomic bomb; in 1951 Seaborg and McMillan received the Nobel Prize for their discovery. Working in a University of California laboratory, Seaborg and his associates gradually extended the periodic table of elements, usually named their discoveries for their place of origin (americum, berkelium, californium), or for fellow scientists (curium, einsteinium, fermium). But Seaborg modestly discounts his achievements: "It was just a matter of being there. After all, we had the cyclotron...
...Chemist Glenn Seaborg talked warmly of the compensations of his calling: "Stable employment, reasonably good pay, and considerably less pressure and worry than many other groups-such as educators." Sometime in August, Seaborg, who won a Nobel Prize with Physicist Edwin McMillan for discovering plutonium (the pair also discovered berkelium, californium, four other elements), will leave his post as associate director of the University of California's Radiation Lab at Berkeley to become a fulltime educator. New job: chancellor of the university's Berkeley campus (18,981 students), replacing Clark Kerr, now president of the university (TIME, July...
...budget by Rice and the staff of KQED, one of the most adventurous educational stations. In most of them Seaborg chats cannily about his favorite subject: nuclear science and the elements, "the building blocks of nature." His props include batches of the nine-odd man-made elements (plutonium, berkelium, etc.), batteries of blinking lights, clicking radiation counters, and black and white checkers to signify protons and neutrons. Seaborg uses them to demonstrate the manipulation of highly radioactive substance. In one film, for example, he extemporizes while a mechanical arm juts out from a wall, picks up a flashlight and directs...