Tennessine

Tennessine

Tennessine is a synthetic chemical element with the symbol Ts and atomic number 117. It is the second-heaviest known element and the penultimate element of the 7th period of the periodic table. The discovery of tennessine was officially announced in Dubna, Russia, by a Russian–American collaboration in April 2010.

About Tennessine in brief

Summary TennessineTennessine is a synthetic chemical element with the symbol Ts and atomic number 117. It is the second-heaviest known element and the penultimate element of the 7th period of the periodic table. The discovery of tennessine was officially announced in Dubna, Russia, by a Russian–American collaboration in April 2010. One of its daughter isotopes was created directly in 2011, partially confirming the results of the experiment. Tennessine may be located in the \”island of stability\”, a concept that explains why some superheavy elements are more stable compared to an overall trend of decreasing stability for elements beyond bismuth on the periodic table. The element is expected to be a volatile metal that neither forms anions nor achieves high oxidation states. Its melting and boiling points and its first ionization energy are nevertheless expected to follow the periodic trends of the halogens. The information collected from its daughters cannot be determined from its original nuclide, so physicists are aiming to synthesize one of the heaviest elements. Spontaneous fission, however, produces various nuclei as well as its daughters, so information cannot be collected from all of its daughters. The most recent discovery of a superheavy element as of 2020 is the element in 2020, which makes it the most recently discovered element in the history of the  Periodic Table as well as the most recent discovered element in the history of the Chemistry and Physics Institutes and the Institute of Pure and Applied Physics and IUPAC and is expected to be a member of group 17, all other members of which are halogens on the  periodic table and  all other members of group 17 are halogens.

In June 2016, the discoverers had suggested the name tennessine after Tennessee, United States, a name which was officially adopted in November 2016. The heaviest atomic nuclei are created in nuclear reactions that combine two other nuclei of unequal size into one; roughly, the more unequal the two nuclei in terms of mass, the greater the possibility that the two react. The material made of the heavier nuclei is made into a target, which is then bombarded by the beam of lighter nuclei. If a new nucleus is produced, it is carried with this beam. In the separator, the newly produced nucleus is separated from other nuclides and transferred to a surface-barrier detector, which stops the nucleus. The transfer takes about 10−6 seconds; in order to be detected, the nucleus must survive this long. The nucleus is recorded again once its decay is registered, and the location, the energy, and time of the decay are measured. The exact location of the upcoming impact on the detector is marked; also marked are its energy and the time of its arrival. The information available to physicists is thus arithmetically determined.