Related papers: A Note on the Prehistory of Superheavy Elements
The heaviest of the transuranic elements known as superheavy elements (SHE) are produced in nuclear reactions in a few specialized laboratories located in Germany, the U.S., Russia, and Japan. The history of this branch of physical science…
What is the heaviest element? In order to address this question, the elements up to $Z=118$ have been synthesized by now by using heavy-ion fusion reactions. This has completed the 7th period in the periodic table of elements, and new…
Unveiling numerical trends among either atomic or equivalent weights that somehow preserved resemblances among elements was frequent in the 1860s. Standing out from the crowd, Meyer and Mendeleev went beyond numerical relationships,…
Understanding where elements were formed has been a key goal in astrophysics for nearly a century, with answers involving cosmology, stellar burning, and cosmic explosions. Since 1957, the origin of the heaviest elements (formed via the…
The production of about half of the heavy elements found in nature is assigned to a specific astrophysical nucleosynthesis process: the rapid neutron capture process (r-process). Although this idea has been postulated more than six decades…
The heaviest chemical elements are naturally produced by the rapid neutron-capture process (r-process) during neutron star mergers or supernovae. The r-process production of elements heavier than uranium (transuranic nuclei) is poorly…
How are the heavy elements formed? This has been a key open question in physics for decades. Recent direct detections of neutron star mergers and observations of evolved stars show signatures of chemical elements in the blue range of their…
Synthesis of new elements at the upper border of the charts of nuclei and investigation of their decay properties and nuclear structure has been one of the main research topics in low energy nuclear physics since more than five decades.…
The existence of nuclei with exotic combinations of protons and neutrons provides fundamental information on the forces acting between nucleons. The maximum number of neutrons a given number of protons can bind, neutron drip line1, is only…
One hundred and five isotopes of the transuranium elements neptunium, plutonium, americium, curium, berkelium and californium have so far been observed; the discovery of these isotopes is discussed. For each isotope a brief summary of the…
The origin of the elements is a fascinating question that scientists have been trying to answer for the last seven decades. The formation of light elements in the primordial universe and heavier elements in astrophysical sources occurs…
In principle, the combined measurements of the mass and radius a giant exoplanet allow one to determine the relative fraction of hydrogen and helium and of heavy elements in the planet. However, uncertainties on the underlying physics imply…
We study Uranium isotopes and surrounding elements at very large neutron number excess. Relativistic mean field and Skyrme-type approaches with different parametrizations are used in the study. Most models show clear indications for…
On the twentieth anniversary of the observation of the top quark, we trace our understanding of this heaviest of all known particles from the prediction of its existence, through the searches and discovery, to the current knowledge of its…
The rapid neutron capture or 'r process' of nucleosynthesis is believed to be responsible for the production of approximately half the natural abundance of heavy elements found on the periodic table above iron (with proton number $Z=26$)…
Our world is wonderful because of the normal but negligibly small baryonic part (i.e., atoms) although unknown dark matter and dark energy dominate the Universe. A stable atomic nucleus could be simply termed as ``strong matter'' since its…
We know that giant planets played a crucial role in the making of our Solar System. The discovery of giant planets orbiting other stars is a formidable opportunity to learn more about these objects, what is their composition, how various…
The problem of the origin of the elements is a fundamental one in astronomy and one that has many open questions. Prominent examples include (1) the nature of Type Ia supernovae and the timescale of their contributions; (2) the…
Neutrinos are the second most abundant particle in the universe. Since the last 50 years, Neutrino physics has been a source of limelight in modern physics because of the incredible characteristics of this elusive particle. According to the…
The properties of complexes with transuranium elements have long been the object of research in various fields of chemistry. However, their experimental study is complicated by their rarity, high cost and special conditions necessary for…