Which Way to the Island?

摘要

Last month at the Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research (GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany, a team of physicists and chemists from across the globe began firing an intense beam of titanium ions at a thin foil made of californium. They will continue to bombard it, day and night, until October. Their aim is to make a handful of atoms-or even just one-of a type that has never before existed on Earth: element 120. "It's a long run, an exciting run," says team leader Christoph Dullmann of GSI and the University of Mainz in Germany. "There's no guarantee that we'll find it, but we have a good chance."