In a feat of modern-day alchemy, scientists have used a beam of vaporized titanium to create one of the heaviest elements on Earth – and they think this new method could pave the way to even heftier horizons.
This is the first time the new technique – in which a hunk of the rare isotope titanium-50 is heated to almost 1,650 °C (3000 °F) to release ions that are beamed at another element – has successfully produced a superheavy element, livermorium.
Livermorium was first synthesized back in 2000, and it’s not the heaviest element humans have created (that would be oganesson, atomic number 118).
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