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Superheavy elements, also known as transactinide elements, transactinides, or super-heavy elements, or superheavies for short, are the chemical elements with atomic number greater than 104. [1] The superheavy elements are those beyond the actinides in the periodic table; the last actinide is lawrencium (atomic number 103).
The process of slow neutron capture used to produce nuclides as heavy as 257 Fm is blocked by short-lived isotopes of fermium that undergo spontaneous fission (for example, 258 Fm has a half-life of 370 μs); this is known as the "fermium gap" and prevents the synthesis of heavier elements in such a reaction.
The first direct proof that nucleosynthesis occurs in stars was the astronomical observation that interstellar gas has become enriched with heavy elements as time passed. As a result, stars that were born from it late in the galaxy, formed with much higher initial heavy element abundances than those that had formed earlier.
Scientists discovered a method to create element 116 using a titanium beam, paving the way for future synthesis of element 120, the "holy grail" of chemistry.
Seaborg's theoretical development of the actinide concept resulted in a redrawing of the periodic table into its current configuration with the actinide series appearing below the lanthanide series. Seaborg developed the chemical elements americium and curium while in Chicago. He managed to secure patents for both elements.
Supernova nucleosynthesis is the nucleosynthesis of chemical elements in supernova explosions.. In sufficiently massive stars, the nucleosynthesis by fusion of lighter elements into heavier ones occurs during sequential hydrostatic burning processes called helium burning, carbon burning, oxygen burning, and silicon burning, in which the byproducts of one nuclear fuel become, after ...
The need for a physical description was already inspired by the relative abundances of the chemical elements in the solar system. Those abundances, when plotted on a graph as a function of the atomic number of the element, have a jagged sawtooth shape that varies by factors of tens of millions (see history of nucleosynthesis theory). [4]
Abundance peaks for the r-process occur near mass numbers A = 82 (elements Se, Br, and Kr), A = 130 (elements Te, I, and Xe) and A = 196 (elements Os, Ir, and Pt). The r-process entails a succession of rapid neutron captures (hence the name) by one or more heavy seed nuclei, typically beginning with nuclei in the abundance peak centered on 56 Fe.