Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory aims to make heavier elements by firing titanium particles at a metal target
Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab
The race to discover new chemical elements will heat up in 2025, resulting in the heaviest one so far and a new row added to the periodic table if successful.
“Patience will be the biggest challenge,” says Jacklyn Gates at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California.
Gates and her colleagues are one of a number of teams attempting to produce element 120, also currently known as unbinilium. Attempts to forge such synthetic substances, which don’t exist naturally on Earth,…