Word: curium
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...check this theory, Dr. Kohman suggests, is more thorough analysis of tektites. Tektites that came from a stellar system much younger than the solar system should, for example, contain traces of short-lived elements (e.g., plutonium 244 and curium 247) that have long been extinct on earth...
Overstuffed Atom. Fields and his colleague Arnold Friedman decided that the best bet would be to bombard curium with carbon ions in a cyclotron. This would be quite a trick; curium, element No. 96, is itself synthetic and intensely radioactive. If any of it were fattened into element 102, the fragile, overstuffed atoms would predictably disintegrate in a few minutes...
Fields and Friedman interested British Chemist John Milsted, who wangled some time on the Stockholm cyclotron, the only one in operation capable of projecting a sufficiently intense beam of carbon ions. Milsted also undertook the tricky job of making curium into a thin film, and sandwiching it between aluminum foil to form a suitable target. The apparatus was arranged so that any atoms of element 102 formed would be knocked out of the target and would stick to a "catcher foil," a bit of plastic film...
Juggler Technique. Element 102 disintegrated so fast that a major problem was to prove that it had been created at all. The scientists developed a technique that would have done credit to a team of Japanese jugglers. After the curium had been bombarded for about 20 minutes, the Swedes shut down the cyclotron. As the concrete shield opened, a group of scientists, wearing gloves and dust masks against radioactivity, dashed into the cyclotron chamber. One snatched the target from the machine, another took it apart and passed it to a third, who extracted the catcher foil. The fastest runner, generally...
...elements heavier than uranium (atomic number 92). First made was neptunium (No. 93), which McMillan named after the planet just outside Uranus. Neptunium turns spontaneously into plutonium (No. 94), used in atom bombs. The other transuranian elements, also produced for the first time at Berkeley: americium (No. 95), curium (No. 96), berkelium (No. 97) and californium...