The Making Of The Heaviest Element In The World — Oganesson (Element 118)

INTRODUCTION

Do you know what's the heaviest element in the world? As the title says, it's Oganesson, currently. But in the future some more elements might be discovered and then they will be named as the heaviest. Why is Oganesson, element 118, the heaviest? Well, when we talk about an element's heaviness, we actually are talking about its "atomic" weight. Atomic weight is the cumulative sum of the number of protons and neutrons in an atom. So as the atomic number increases, it's atomic weight also gets increased. And as Oganesson is the last element in the current periodic table, naturally it has the heaviest atomic weight.

OGANESSON

Oganesson as we all know, is artifically produced. It is a transuranium element. Transuranium elements are elements that do not exist naturally, that is, elements after uranium (92) which are produced artificially in labs. Now, the interesting thing about Oganesson is that it is a noble gas. Noble gases do not react with anything. They are stable and do not form bonds (except for Krypton, which is an exception). 

But what if we change the temperature? What's temperature? Merely the kinetic energy, right? Just look at the sun where millions of helium atoms are reacting and breaking (nuclear fusion and fission). Talk about helium being stable, or any other noble gas being stable, just bring in very high temperatures and voila, your noble gas won't remain noble. It'll break. Anyway, back to Oganesson, it's still stable, atleast when we are not increasing temperatures and stuff.

THE MAKING OF OGANESSON

In 1999, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California announced the production of a new element by bombarding lead-208 with atoms of krypton-86. But, unfortunately, due to wrong data, this experiment was cancelled. It was in 2006, in Russia, where the scientists announced the invention of Oganesson. Oganesson was made in a cyclotron. A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator which repeatedly propels a beam of charged particles (protons) in a circular path. A nuclear reaction was conducted where calcium-48 was bombarded with a californium-249 at an energy of 245 million electron volts. This reaction resulted in 3 separate neutrons and an Oganesson atom as products.

Calcium's mass is 48 and when it is added to Californium's mass which is 249, the result is a total atomic weight of 297 amu. Out of this, the result was 3 neutrons and an Oganesson atom. If we subtract the three neutron particles from 297 particles, we get to know that Oganesson has an atomic mass of 294. And so, this was how the discovery of Oganesson was made.

MORE ABOUT OGANESSON

After creation, it takes about a millisecond for oganesson to decay into another transuranium element, livermorium (116), by emitting an alpha particle or a helium nucleas. No physical or chemical properties about oganesson can be directly determined, but it is very likely that oganesson exists as a gas at room temperature. 

In January 2016 the discovery of element 118 was recognized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). The discoverers named it oganesson after Russian physicist Yuri Oganessian, who led the group at Dubna that discovered it and several other of the heaviest transuranium elements. The name oganesson was approved by IUPAC in November 2016.

And so this is how several transuranium elements came into existence as we know them today. The world of chemistry is still vast and a lot more has to be explored yet.