Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam visited ORNL Jan. 27 to congratulate the team involved in the discovery of the element tennessine, named in recognition of the vital contributions of the state of Tennessee to the international search for new superheavy elements.
ORNL marked the discovery by announcing more than 1,000 public middle schools and high schools in Tennessee are receiving new charts of the periodic table. Tennessine—the official name for element 117—completes the seventh row of the table and the column of elements classified as halogens. The charts will include the signatures of Haslam and ORNL Director Thom Mason.
“We had two very significant announcements in Tennessee this fall as it relates to science,” Haslam said during a ceremony in the Iran Thomas Auditorium at the SNS.
“In October, the Nation’s Report Card announced that Tennessee students are the fastest improving in the nation in science. In November, Tennessee became only the second state to be recognized in the periodic table of elements. Having an element named in our honor is further evidence of the scientific excellence that exists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee, Vanderbilt University and other institutions throughout our state. By UT-Battelle donating new periodic tables to every middle and high school in Tennessee, students can feel proud of our state’s important role in the scientific community and inspired to play a role in its future.”
Haslam spoke after Yuri Oganessian, the Russian scientist who developed the “hot fusion” method of creating superheavy elements, delivered a Eugene P. Wigner Distinguished Lecture to ORNL staff. Oganessian was joined by Victor Matveev, director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, where the experiment was performed.
“We appreciate Gov. Haslam’s recognition of the laboratory’s research and support staff who helped add this historic experiment to the long list of Tennessee’s scientific achievements,” Mason said. “We also welcome Dr. Oganessian and Dr. Matveev to ORNL to mark the culmination of our long partnership to expand the horizons of physics and chemistry.”
The state of Tennessee made several contributions to tennessine’s discovery. The experiment to discover element 117 required the radioisotope berkelium-249.
The only source of berkelium-249 is ORNL’s High Flux Isotope Reactor and adjoining Radiochemical Engineering Development Center. When a campaign to make the industrially important radioisotope californium-252 began in 2008 under the auspices of the DOE Isotope Program, Oganessian contacted Jim Roberto, ORNL’s director of science and technology partnerships. Roberto pulled together a team of scientists and engineers to produce berkelium-249 (Bk-249) as a byproduct of the californium production, for the experiment and to collaborate in the international research effort.
After a year-long process, the discovery team had detected six atoms of element 117 at JINR’s atom smasher, which the team including JINR, ORNL, Vanderbilt and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reported in early April 2010. Follow-up experiments to confirm the discovery, which included nuclear physicists from UT, have identified 16 more of the “superheavy” atoms. The DOE Isotope Program produced and contributed the additional amounts of Bk-249 to the nuclear physics research community for these follow-up experiments.
The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) announced its final approval of tennessine as the name for element 117 last November. IUPAC also announced the naming of element 115, which is a decay product of element 117, as moscovium after the Moscow region where JINR is located, and element 118 as oganesson, honoring Oganessian.
Although the superheavy elements at the bottom of the periodic table are extremely short lived, scientist believe an “island of stability” may exist as the atomic numbers of newly discovered elements increase, which could revolutionize physics and chemistry. The discovery of tennessine represents strong evidence of the existence of the island of stability.
“The discovery of tennessine is an example of the potential realized when nations combine their resources and work together in the pursuit of knowledge that could be of tremendous benefit to society,” Roberto said.
The periodic tables to be issued by UT-Battelle to the schools represent an approximately $25,000 corporate gift to public education in Tennessee.
