Big Ideas Lab: The hunt for superheavy elements at LLNL and the Dubna collaboration

This episode of Big Ideas Lab explores how scientists create superheavy elements that do not occur in nature, revealing the forces that hold nuclei together. It covers the collaboration between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Russia’s Dubna Institute, the challenges of accelerating and colliding nuclei, and the detectors that prove an element’s existence through its decay patterns. The discussion highlights key discoveries such as livermorium and tennessine, and outlines why pushing the periodic table matters for understanding matter and the universe. It also mentions LLNL’s broad career opportunities across science, engineering, IT, and more.

Overview

The Big Ideas Lab episode centers on Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s pursuit of superheavy elements, the physics behind their fleeting existence, and the long-standing collaboration with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia. The program frames the periodic table as a live map of how matter behaves at the smallest scales and explains why scientists chase elements that last only milliseconds before decaying.

"Nuclear theory is the scientific framework that explains how atomic nuclei hold together." - Don Shaughnessy

Creating and Detecting New Elements

To forge new atoms, researchers must smash together nuclei at high energies, a process that requires precise energy, timing, and target materials. LLNL supplied tailor-made samples while Dubna operated a powerful accelerator, enabling experiments that could produce superheavy nuclei. The path from collision to confirmation is painstaking; nuclei may live only moments, leaving behind a fingerprint in the detector readouts as they decay through alpha emissions and other signals.

"These experiments demand careful setup, constant tuning, and most important, patience." - Don Shaughnessy

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the collaboration led to the discovery of several elements, including 114 through 118, with livermorium named in recognition of LLNL’s contributions. The precise decay patterns—like sequential alpha emissions and eventual fission—provide the evidence that a new element briefly existed, even if observers never see the atom itself.

Significance and Scope

Beyond adding new entries to the periodic table, these discoveries illuminate how nuclear forces balance with electromagnetic repulsion as protons pile into heavier nuclei. The research helps scientists explore the rules governing matter at extreme scales and tests theoretical models about nuclear stability, decay chains, and the limits of chemical elements. The episode also touches on the human elements of big science—collaboration, logistics, and the endurance required to pursue discoveries that may only be glimpsed in detectors after months or years of work.

"To make a new element, we actually have to take two existing elements and basically just smash them together so that they combine all of their particles." - Big Ideas Lab Narration

Implications for the Future

As researchers push toward elements 119 and 120, the challenges mount—from optimizing beam energy to ensuring safe handling of radioactive materials to coordinating international teams across time zones. The pursuit remains a testament to human curiosity about how the universe is built, echoing the enduring role of the periodic table as a dynamic roadmap for understanding matter. The episode closes by linking this frontier science to broader scientific literacy and the ongoing quest to expand what humanity knows about the building blocks of reality.