Forging Element 116: Titanium-50’s Astonishing Breakthrough

I love that Isaac Newton was into alchemy. There’s something almost fun about the idea that one of the most brilliant minds was also trying (many years ahead of his time) to change atoms and create gold out of something else.
The idea of changing one element into another has been around much longer than I’d even know where to start.
But, the cool thing is that scientists are actually starting to do it.

At Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a group of researchers took a particle beam made of titanium-50, which is a rare isotope with 22 protons and 28 neutrons, and fired it at plutonium-244.
Not a metaphorical shot or the kind you drink after a long day, but a literal one: accelerating ions to one-tenth the speed of light and smashing them into a heavy metal target, hoping that for a fraction of a second, the protons and neutrons might knit together into something new.

And against all odds, they ended up catching two atoms.

Just two, which is better than one, but less great than three. (In case you were wondering how math mathed).

But those two atoms were something extraordinary: livermorium, element 116. A superheavy element that exists nowhere in nature, and just an echo of a dream Dmitri Mendeleev once penciled into his periodic table long before we had the tools to build it.

This wasn’t the first time livermorium had been made, but it was the first time it had been made this way, by using titanium-50 instead of calcium-48, the long-standing workhorse of superheavy element chemistry.
And that subtle shift matters more than it sounds.

Because with titanium, a new fun and exciting door creaked open.

Why Superheavy Elements Matter

You might be asking: why bother?
Why throw decades of work and millions of dollars at atoms that last for thousandths of a second before collapsing? (Oh, did I not mention that they collapsed afterwards?)

The answer is found somewhere between both curiosity and potential.

Superheavy elements (those past uranium atomic number 92) shouldn’t even exist by the ordinary rules of nuclear stability. The repulsive forces inside such massive nuclei are so overwhelming that the whole thing should fall apart instantly.
And yet…they don’t. For fleeting instants, they hold together.

Curious, right?

Nuclear physicists have long told stories about an “island of stability”, which is a hypothetical region of the periodic table where certain superheavy isotopes might be stable enough to last minutes, hours, or maybe even years.
Long enough to study, or long enough to use is the hope anyway.

If these isotopes can actually be reached, the implications would ripple through science and technology.

Nuclear physics would gain a deeper map of the forces binding protons and neutrons.
Chemistry might discover elements with strange, unique properties, and practical tech could someday harness isotopes with medical or energy applications we can’t even imagine today.

Livermorium isn’t on that island exactly, it’s more of a stepping-stone in these turbulent waters leading there, but every atom caught is a proof that our ships still float.
In theory.

Berkeley’s Long Dance with Elements

It feels right to me that Berkeley Lab was part of this story, because it really should be.

This is the same lab where Glenn Seaborg and his team, in the 1940s and 50s, pioneered the synthesis of plutonium, americium, curium, berkelium, californium. And if you didn’t know those were elements, no worries, neither did I. But, my point is that entire swaths of the periodic table carry the literal fingerprints of this place.

In 2012, element 116 was officially named livermorium in honor of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a sibling institution just across the Bay.
Until then, it was simply “ununhexium,” a placeholder in the periodic table, which I kind of wish they had kept. Can you imagine talking about ununhexium…what a mouthful.

I digress though, back then, calcium-48 was the magical projectile. It’s unusually stable for its size, and when slammed into heavy actinides, it occasionally fuses into something new.
Most of the superheavy elements we know were created with these calcium-48 beams.

But calcium is reaching its limits. To push past element 118 (oganesson) and aim for 119 or 120, the cross-sections (the probabilities of success) shrink to nearly nothing.
It’s like trying to throw darts at a bullseye the size of a pinhead from across a football field.

So Berkeley tried titanium.

Why Titanium-50 Is Different

Titanium-50 carries more protons than calcium-48. Which is more than just a fun random fact I threw at you, it actually matters.
A heavier beam can push the fused nucleus closer to the famous “island of stability” by nudging neutron-proton ratios in new directions.

In July 2024, the Berkeley team announced that it had actually worked. Not a flood of livermorium, not even a trickle of it, but two solitary drops.
Two atoms of livermorium, born when titanium-50 kissed plutonium-244 in the heart of the 88-Inch Cyclotron. How romantic.

Those two atoms decayed within milliseconds, spitting out alpha particles as they unraveled back into lighter nuclei…but their brief signature was undeniable and 100% true.

A first!

The Fragility of Success

It’s hard to convey just how improbable this is according to the interwebs.

The vast majority of titanium-50 ions miss their mark entirely, with billions upon billions smashing into nothing, or grazing plutonium atoms in collisions too weak to fuse to anything helpful.
Of those rare unions, almost all fall apart just instantly.

To get just two atoms, the machine had to run for actual weeks.
A stream of ions, a target thinner than a strand of hair, and detectors tuned to catch hints of decay products.

It’s the physics equivalent of tossing handfuls of sand at a wall and hoping, every once in a while, two grains stick together long enough to glimpse before they fall.

Sometimes that’s how progress happens in this field, atom by atom, with almost a little luck necessary.

Science as Storytelling

When I read about this, I didn’t just see numbers and isotopes, I saw myth and Isaac Newton brought back to life for a moment.

I think about a beam of titanium-50, hurling through a machine like my husband with a grudge. A plutonium target waiting, steady, battered with unending force. And from the wreckage, for just a heartbeat (or less than that), a new element flickers into being.

If ancient cultures had this story, they would have called it god-making. A tale of Prometheus in a lab coat, stealing new fire from the nucleus instead of the sky. Alchemy in real life.

We call it nuclear chemistry. A little less magical, but okay.

So where do we go from two atoms?
The team at Berkeley isn’t stopping, thank goodness. The goal isn’t to stockpile livermorium (that’s impossible right now), but to refine techniques, learn what works, and prepare for even heavier attempts.

Element 119 (ununennium) and element 120 are the next targets, tantalizing because they would begin a whole new row on the periodic table. A symbolic leap, as much as a scientific one.

To get there, beams heavier than calcium will probably be necessary, titanium, chromium, perhaps even iron.
Each adds protons, adjusts neutron balance, and shifts the odds ever so slightly.

It’s a long shot…but then again, so was this experiment, and here we are.

The Island of Stability

Let’s talk a bit more about that Island of Stability I mentioned earlier, because it’s a cool concept.
Atoms are built sort of like onions. At the center sits the nucleus, which is made of a dense knot of protons and neutrons.
These particles don’t just huddle together randomly, they arrange themselves in little shells, little layers of stability made by quantum mechanics.

It’s why oxygen is so common, why iron is so enduring, and why lead sits heavy at the end of radioactive decay chains. Their nuclear shells happen to be full, keeping balance.

Superheavy elements like livermorium strain this balance to the breaking point. Too many protons repel one another like magnets flipped the wrong way, and neutrons can only do so much to glue the whole thing together. Most isotopes crumble instantly, breaking apart in millionths of a second.

But calculations suggest that at higher numbers, like around element 120 or beyond, certain neutron-proton ratios might form a magic combination. Sort of like closed shells, or a nucleus strong enough to last not just milliseconds, but hours, maybe years.

This hypothetical zone has been named the Island of Stability.

It’s more than a dream, one day if we can reach it, we’d hold in our hands entirely new elements with enough lifetime to study their chemistry. Would they behave like metals, or something stranger? Would their electron shells help us to learn unexpected reactivity, catalysts, superconductors, medicines?

Nobody knows right now, and that is what’s fueling everything.

Alchemy, Reborn

Centuries ago, alchemists like Isaac Newton tried to transmute lead into gold.
They all failed, of course, they lacked cyclotrons and quantum theory, but they did leave behind something just as valuable: that craving to change matter, and bend nature into new forms.

What Berkeley did in 2024 is, in many ways, the closest to alchemy we’ve ever come. They didn’t just shift lead toward gold, they forged something that never existed in the natural world at all.

For just a few milliseconds, the universe contained two atoms of livermorium, that wasn’t born in stars or supernovae, but by human hands.

The alchemists of old were chasing immortality through matter, but today’s scientists, whether they admit it or not, are doing the same thing.

If you’re feeling nerdy, like me, you might like this periodic table of elements that actually has 83 of the elements inside! Obviously, the dangerous ones are not included.