Livermorium is an artificially produced radioactive element. It has the chemical symbol Lv and an atomic number (number of protons) of 116. Chemists place livermorium in the transactinide group of transuranium elements. For information on the position of livermorium on the periodic table, see the article Periodic table.
In 2000, Russian and American physicists and chemists working at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, near Moscow, announced the creation of the first atom of the livermorium, then simply called element 116. In 2001, those researchers said that, in additional experiments, they had produced two more atoms of element 116. In 2011, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) credited the discovery to the Dubna team and a collaborating team at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, California. The element is named in honor of the LLNL. The IUPAC is the recognized authority in crediting the discovery of elements and assigning names to them.
All three atoms created at Dubna were atoms of the same isotope. Isotopes are forms of an element with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons. Each atom of element 116 had an atomic mass number (total number of protons and neutrons) of 292. The scientists created livermorium in a device known as a particle accelerator (see Particle accelerator). They bombarded curium, which has an atomic number of 96, with calcium, whose atomic number is 20.
The researchers estimated that the half-life of isotope 292 is 0.053 second—that is, due to radioactive decay, only half the atoms in a sample of isotope 292 would still be atoms of that isotope after 0.053 second. To determine an isotope’s half-life with much accuracy, scientists must study many atoms of the isotope. When only a few atoms have been detected—as in the case of isotope 292—they can obtain only an approximate value of the half-life.
