Superheavy: Making and Breaking the Periodic Table

About the Book

So how do you go about creating a new element? Find a 2,100-ton ion machine gun that fires six trillion ions per second at 10% the speed of light towards an unimaginably small target. It’s rare that they hit, and rarer still that target and ion fuse together rather than rip apart. If they do stick together, a new element is made. Then all you need to do is separate this new hybrid from the vast quantities of unreacted material and detect it before it decays – which happens in less than a second. If all of that is a success, well, congratulations! You’ve got yourself a brand new element.

The science of element discovery is a truly fascinating field, and is constantly rewriting the laws of chemistry and physics as we know them. As recently as November 2016, four new ‘superheavy’ elements – the heaviest created by man – were named, stretching the periodic table to 118 elements. They have broken the rules of the periodic table, rewriting the science we’re taught in school, and have the potential to revolutionise our lives.

Superheavy will be the first book to take an in-depth look at how these elements are discovered, why they matter and where they will take us. It will start by taking us back to the very beginning, with the creation of the atomic bomb and the cold war race between the US and Soviet teams. It will tell the story of the major players, such as Ernest Lawrence who revolutionised the field of particle physics with the creation of the cyclotron; Yuri Oganessian, the ‘guerilla scientist’ who opened up a new era of discovery in the field and is the only living scientists to have an element named after him; and Victor Ninov, the disgraced physicist who almost pulled off the greatest fraud in nuclear science. It will bring us in a full circle back to Oak Bridge National Laboratory, where the first atomic bomb was developed, and that has more recently been an essential player in creating the new superheavy element 117.

Throughout, Superheavy will explain the complex science of element discovery in clear and easy-to-follow terms. It will walk through the theories of atomic structure, discuss the equipment used and explain the purpose of the research. By the end of the book readers will not only marvel at how far we’ve come, they will be in awe of where we are going and what this could mean for the worlds of physics and chemistry as we know them today.

Table of Contents:

Prologue
Introduction

PART I: CHILDREN OF THE ATOM
Chapter 1: Modern Alchemy
Chapter 2: The Secret of Gilman Hall
Chapter 3: How to Build a Nuclear Weapon
Chapter 4: Superman vs the FBI
Chapter 5: Universitium ofium Californium Berkelium
Chapter 6: The Death of Jimmy Robinson
Chapter 7: Presidents and Beetles

PART II: TRANSFERMIUM WARS
Chapter 8: Nobelievium
Chapter 9: From Russia with Flerov
Chapter 10: The East and the West
Chapter 11: Xanthasia and the Magic Numbers
Chapter 12: Life at the Edge of Science
Chapter 13: The Atoms that Came in from the Cold
Chapter 14: Changing the Rules
Chapter 15: How to Name your Element

PART III: THE END OF CHEMISTRY
Chapter 16: After the Wall Came Down
Chapter 17: The Ninov Fraud
Chapter 18: A New Hope
Chapter 19: Beams of the Rising Sun
Chapter 20: The Edge of the Unknown
Chapter 21: Beyond Superheavy

Epilogue
References
Acknowledgements
Index

About the Author :
Kit Chapman is an award-winning science journalist and broadcaster. Initially qualifying as a pharmacist, Chapman began his career on medical journal The Practitioner before moving to Chemist+Druggist, the UK's leading magazine for pharmacists. Here he was named PTC New Business News Journalist of the Year and garnered further award nominations from the British Society of Magazine Editors (BSME) and Professional Publishers Association (PPA). After stints as campaign website manager for the British Medical Association and clinical editor for The Pharmaceutical Journal, Chapman was appointed comment editor for Chemistry World, the official magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Chapman also writes for the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, and has appeared as an expert for the BBC and Sky News.

Review :
Without any compromise in accuracy, the book is compelling, conversational and entertaining, full of great stories and insights into the characters behind the quest. Making elements that don’t exist in nature is one of the craziest, most painstaking and bold pursuits in all of science, and Superheavy tells that story for the first time, with wit and verve. This deeply researched and engaging tour of the nether reaches of the periodic table will delight and inform everyone from the expert to the reader with only the dimmest memory of the iconic chart of chemical elements on the school lab wall. With meticulous attention to detail and careful research, Chapman masterfully captures the excitement, politics and competition of the transuranic elements. Chapman's energy and enthusiasm is evident in every interaction, whether he is uncovering elaborate experimental details or unearthing scientific rivalries. To anyone who imagines that the romantic age of elemental discovery ended in the 19th century, Kit Chapman’s hugely entertaining account of the discovery of the elements past uranium will be a real eye-opener. Larger than life characters, strange stories of errors, improvisation, and luck (good and bad) abound here. With a solid introduction to the science underpinning the stability and separation of these mysterious and mostly ephemeral species, there is much for everyone to learn and connect with here.