Overview

Livermorium was first created in 2000 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, in collaboration with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, by fusing curium and calcium nuclei. It was named after the Livermore laboratory. Livermorium is an intensely radioactive synthetic metal, known only from a very small number of atoms. Its isotopes survive only milliseconds and it has no studied chemistry; expected to sit beneath polonium as a heavy relative of the chalcogens, it is known only through the sequence of alpha decays by which each atom betrays its brief existence.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, founded in 1952 as a second American nuclear-weapons design laboratory alongside Los Alamos, diversified over subsequent decades into a much wider range of physics research, including laser-driven fusion and, through this long-running partnership with Dubna, the creation of new superheavy elements, a notable second act for an institution originally built for entirely different Cold War purposes. The collaboration continued productively even through periods of considerable diplomatic tension between Washington and Moscow, an unusual constant in an otherwise strained relationship.