Friday, November 10, 2000, 16:00
WHGA Auditorium
Prof. H. Gäggeler, PSI/Bern
Abstract:
During the last two years the three new elements Z=114, 116 and 118 have
been discovered at Dubna and at the Lawrence Berkeley laboratory. These
discoveries found worldwide recognition due to the fact that some of the
new isotopes have very long half lives of up to several minutes, proving
the existing of the long-standing prediction of a new island of
relatively stable nuclides around Z=114 and N=184, the so-called
superheavy elements.
This recent findings open up new perspectives in chemistry since
elements with isotopes having half-lives longer than about 5 seconds can
- with present day techniques - be investigated.
During the last year a heavy ion beam time at the PSI injector 1 enabled
to study, for the first time, the chemistry of bohrium, the element with
the atomic number 107. An outline of this experiment will be given as
well as an outlook to first ever chemical studies of even heavier
elements.