Category: Halogen | State: Unknown
The periodic table of elements serves as the foundational map of the physical universe, categorizing every type of atom known to exist. Near the very bottom right corner of this map lies element 117, Tennessine. Unlike familiar materials such as iron, carbon, or gold, Tennessine does not exist in the natural world today. It is a synthetic, superheavy element born from extreme human ingenuity, massive particle accelerators, and unprecedented international scientific cooperation.
To fully understand Tennessine, one must step beyond everyday chemistry and explore the extreme boundaries of nuclear physics, the mechanics of relativistic quantum theory, and the complex logistics of creating matter that survives for only a fraction of a second. This comprehensive report provides an exhaustive, step-by-step examination of Tennessine, covering its violent cosmic origins, its modern laboratory synthesis, its unique physical properties, and its vital role in the future of scientific discovery.
To trace the origin of Tennessine, one must look at how the universe creates elements. In the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, the universe was incredibly hot and dense, but it contained only the lightest, simplest elements: primarily hydrogen, helium, and a microscopic amount of lithium.
As the universe expanded and cooled, gravity pulled vast clouds of hydrogen together to form the first stars. Within the crushing pressure and immense heat of these stellar cores, nuclear fusion began. Stars act as cosmic furnaces, crushing light elements together to form heavier ones. Hydrogen fuses into helium; helium fuses into carbon and oxygen; and in the most massive stars, the fusion chain continues all the way up to iron.
However, stellar core fusion hits an insurmountable wall at iron. Fusing elements lighter than iron releases energy, which pushes outward and keeps the star from collapsing under its own gravity. Fusing elements heavier than iron consumes energy. When a massive star builds up an iron core, the fusion engine stalls, gravity wins, and the star collapses violently, triggering a supernova explosion. For decades, astrophysicists believed that the energy released during these core-collapse supernovae was the primary engine for generating all the heavy elements in the universe.
Today, the scientific consensus points to an even more extreme cosmic event for the heaviest elements: the collision of two neutron stars.
When massive stars explode, they sometimes leave behind ultra-dense remnants called neutron stars. If two neutron stars orbit one another, they eventually spiral inward and collide, creating a cataclysmic explosion known as a kilonova. This environment triggers a phenomenon known as the rapid neutron-capture process, or “r-process”.
During a neutron star merger, atomic nuclei are bombarded by a staggering number of free neutrons. The bombardment is so rapid that the nuclei absorb multiple neutrons before they have the chance to undergo radioactive beta decay. This violent cosmic alchemy is responsible for creating a large portion of the universe’s heavy elements, such as gold, platinum, lead, and uranium. This theory gained massive physical proof in 2017 when the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave observatories detected GW170817, a neutron star merger that produced visible signatures of newly forged heavy elements.
Theoretical models and simulations suggest that the high neutron densities in the ejected matter of a kilonova are powerful enough to push the r-process far beyond uranium. In this chaotic environment, superheavy elements, including Tennessine (element 117), are almost certainly synthesized. Calculations indicate that a large number of Tennessine isotopes can form during a neutron star merger, but they are fleeting visitors to the physical universe.
Despite its theoretical creation in the deep cosmos, Tennessine does not exist naturally anywhere on Earth today. If one were to search the Earth’s crust, mantle, or molten core, they would find exactly zero atoms of Tennessine.
The reason for this total absence lies in the element’s extreme radioactive instability. Superheavy elements have massive, unwieldy nuclei that struggle to hold themselves together. Any Tennessine created in a distant neutron star collision would undergo rapid alpha decay or spontaneous fission almost immediately. Scientific calculations indicate that any Tennessine formed during a cosmic event will vanish entirely within 316 to 1,000 seconds of its creation.
Therefore, even if immense quantities of Tennessine were forged billions of years ago in the stellar neighborhood that eventually formed our solar system, every single atom decayed into lighter, more stable elements long before the Earth even solidified. Tennessine exists on our planet today solely because human beings build it, one atom at a time, inside highly specialized laboratories.
Because Tennessine is a synthetic element that vanishes in milliseconds, it was entirely absent from the ancient world. Archaeological evidence from early human civilizations—such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, the Indus Valley, and the Maya—demonstrates a profound mastery of naturally occurring, stable elements. The Maya carved intricate artifacts from jade; the Egyptians smelted gold and copper with astonishing precision; and the Indus Valley and Mesopotamian civilizations revolutionized human history by forging bronze alloys from copper and tin.
However, these ancient peoples had no conception of atomic theory, let alone radioactivity or superheavy elements. The understanding of the universe in antiquity was largely philosophical, based on classical elements like earth, water, air, and fire. For thousands of years, human understanding of elements remained tied solely to what could be dug out of the ground, melted in a forge, or held in a hand. Tennessine played absolutely no role in early human history, as humanity lacked both the theoretical framework to imagine it and the technological capacity to create it.
The human relationship with the elements changed drastically in the 20th century with the advent of nuclear physics. Scientists learned that the atom was not indivisible; it contained a dense nucleus of protons and neutrons. By the 1940s, during the Manhattan Project, scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the University of California, Berkeley, realized that by bombarding heavy elements like uranium with neutrons or lighter nuclei, they could artificially synthesize entirely new elements that did not exist in nature.
This led to the “actinide concept” proposed by Glenn T. Seaborg, which fundamentally reshaped the periodic table and initiated a decades-long international race to discover heavier and heavier synthetic elements, known as transactinides or superheavy elements. Throughout the Cold War, this search was highly competitive, but by the 21st century, the difficulty of creating these elements necessitated profound global collaboration.
The specific, organized effort to synthesize element 117 began in late 2004. Yuri Oganessian, a visionary physicist and the scientific leader of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, proposed an ambitious experiment to the United States Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Oganessian had perfected a technique known as “hot fusion,” which involved firing a beam of neutron-rich calcium-48 ions at heavy actinide targets to create superheavy elements. By the early 2000s, this hot fusion method had successfully produced elements 114, 115, 116, and 118. Element 117 remained the very last missing piece required to complete the seventh row of the periodic table.
To create element 117, the Russian team needed a highly specific, exceptionally rare target material: Berkelium-249. At the time, ORNL in Tennessee was the only facility on the planet capable of producing this highly radioactive isotope in the required quantities.
In 2008, physics professor Joe Hamilton of Vanderbilt University recognized an upcoming californium production campaign at ORNL and acted as a catalyst, introducing Oganessian to Jim Roberto, the director of Scientific and Technology Partnerships at ORNL. This meeting formally set the historic U.S.-Russian collaboration in motion. The experiment ultimately grew into a massive international effort involving JINR, ORNL, Vanderbilt University, the University of Tennessee, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
In 2009, after a grueling year-long process to produce and purify just 22 milligrams of berkelium at ORNL, the highly radioactive material was shipped to Russia in a complex logistical operation. At JINR, the berkelium target was continuously bombarded with a beam of trillions of calcium-48 ions per second for 150 days.
The data was analyzed meticulously. On April 9, 2010, the international team officially published their results in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters. Out of trillions of collisions, they had confirmed the detection of exactly six atoms of element 117.
On November 28, 2016, following years of independent verification, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) officially recognized the discovery and named the element “Tennessine” (symbol Ts) to honor the fundamental contributions of the state of Tennessee, particularly the scientists and facilities at ORNL, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Tennessee.
Because macroscopic quantities of Tennessine have never been produced, scientists cannot simply hold a block of it and test its conductivity or melting point in a traditional laboratory. Instead, they rely on complex quantum mechanics, relativistic density functional theory, and the precise decay patterns of the few atoms ever created to predict and verify its properties.
The atomic structure of Tennessine places it at the very edge of physical chemistry.
Based on its position in the periodic table and advanced computer modeling, physicists have extrapolated the physical properties of Tennessine if a bulk sample could somehow be stabilized.
| Property | Predicted Value / Description |
|---|---|
| Appearance | Expected to be a dark, volatile metal or semi-metal at room temperature. |
| Density | Estimated at roughly 7.1 to 7.3 g/cm$^3$ (extrapolated from heavy element group trends). |
| Melting Point | Expected to be approximately 350-500 °C, following trends down the halogen column. |
| Boiling Point | Predicted to be around 610 °C. |
| Hardness, Malleability, Ductility | Unknown precisely. As it is predicted to exhibit semi-metallic properties, it might be brittle rather than malleable like a true metal. |
| Thermal/Electrical Conductivity | Expected to possess distinct thermal and electrical conductivity, contrasting sharply with lighter, insulating halogens like fluorine or chlorine. |
Tennessine is placed in Group 17 of the periodic table, making it the heaviest known member of the halogen family (which includes familiar elements like fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and astatine). However, Tennessine challenges the very laws of classical chemistry.
Because its nucleus contains a massive 117 positively charged protons, it exerts an unimaginable electrostatic pull on its orbiting negatively charged electrons. To avoid falling directly into the nucleus, the innermost s-orbital electrons must move at velocities approaching the speed of light. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, as an object approaches light speed, its mass increases. This relativistic mass increase causes the inner electron orbitals to physically contract closer to the nucleus.
This inner contraction shields the outermost valence electrons, causing them to expand outward and become more loosely bound. Due to these extreme “relativistic effects,” Tennessine is not expected to behave like a standard halogen at all.
Lighter halogens easily capture an extra electron to form negative ions (anions) with an oxidation state of -1 to complete their outer shell. Tennessine, however, is highly unlikely to form anions. Instead, it is predicted to favor positive oxidation states (+1 and +3) and will likely behave more like a post-transition metal or a metalloid.
Calculations indicate that if a Tennessine-Hydrogen (Ts-H) bond were to form, it would have a dissociation energy of roughly 163.03 kJ/mol, a bond distance of 196.76 pm, and an electronegativity value of approximately 1.145—which is significantly lower than lighter halogens like iodine or astatine. It forms no natural minerals and does not interact with air, water, or acids in any practical sense, because it undergoes nuclear decay long before such macroscopic chemical reactions can physically take place.
When examining global reserves, mining production, and geological settings, the evaluation of Tennessine is entirely unique compared to traditional elements like copper or lithium.
Because it cannot be mined from the Earth, Tennessine must be “extracted” from the laws of physics themselves through artificial laboratory synthesis. The global supply chain for this element relies entirely on advanced particle cyclotrons and highly secure radiochemical facilities. Synthesizing even a single atom is a monumental feat of global engineering.
The creation of Tennessine requires a highly coordinated, multi-stage process spanning continents:
This technology is incredibly resource-intensive. Synthesizing a few atoms takes over a year of chemical preparation and up to 150 days of continuous, relentless particle accelerator operations.
When categorizing the practical uses of elements across the global economy, Tennessine stands apart. Because only a few dozen atoms of Tennessine have ever been observed in human history, and because they survive for less than a tenth of a second, the element has zero commercial, industrial, or everyday applications.
To understand its role in the world, one must look at why it cannot be used in traditional sectors, and what its true, underlying purpose is.
While entirely lacking in commercial applications, Tennessine has a profound scientific use. It is used exclusively by theoretical and experimental physicists to test the very limits of quantum mechanics, relativistic chemistry, and the strong nuclear force.
Specifically, Tennessine provides critical empirical evidence for the theoretical “Island of Stability”. In nuclear physics, there is a general trend of decreasing stability as elements grow heavier—the massive nuclei simply cannot hold themselves together against the repulsive force of so many protons. However, theoretical shell models suggest that if an atom has a specific “magic number” of protons and neutrons (predicted to be near Z=114 or Z=120, and N=184), the nuclear shells will close cleanly. This closed-shell arrangement would grant the superheavy element much greater stability, acting to counter spontaneous fission.
The successful synthesis of Tennessine, and the crucial observation that its heavier isotopes survive longer than its lighter ones as neutron numbers increase, strongly supports the existence of this Island of Stability. Tennessine acts as a stepping stone, pointing toward undiscovered superheavy elements that might survive for days, years, or even millennia.
Tennessine is not traded as a global commodity. It does not appear on the London Metal Exchange, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, or any other financial market. It has no benchmark or reference price, as it cannot be bought or sold.
However, the raw materials and operational hours required to synthesize it carry an astronomical economic cost. The primary beam material, rare Calcium-48, costs approximately $200,000 per gram. The target material, Berkelium-249, is considered one of the most expensive and difficult-to-obtain substances on Earth, with theoretical valuations placing it at approximately $185 billion per kilogram. This cost does not represent a market price, but rather reflects the immense operational budgets of the national laboratories, nuclear reactors, and radiochemical hot cells required to produce it.
Tennessine is not a “critical mineral” in the traditional economic sense; a shortage of Tennessine will not disrupt smartphone manufacturing or national power grids.
However, the scientific supply chain required to produce the elements that lead to Tennessine is highly critical, incredibly specialized, and deeply vulnerable. Only two places in the world possess the high-flux reactors and radiochemical infrastructure capable of producing the heavy actinide targets (like berkelium, curium, and californium) needed for superheavy element research: the HFIR facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the USA, and the RIAR facility in Dimitrovgrad, Russia. Any disruption to these two facilities halts global superheavy element research immediately.
For decades, the search for superheavy elements has served as a unique mirror for international relations. During the Cold War, the discovery of elements was an intensely competitive proxy battle for scientific supremacy, with American laboratories in Berkeley and Soviet laboratories in Dubna racing to synthesize and name elements.
By the early 21st century, this competitive stance shifted to one of profound collaboration. The discovery of Tennessine was hailed worldwide as a triumph of post-Cold War U.S.-Russian scientific diplomacy. As Jim Roberto of ORNL noted, the project demonstrated the immense potential realized “when nations come together to lend their unique capabilities toward a scientific vision”.
However, current geopolitical tensions deeply impact this field. Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, international scientific cooperation with Russia faced severe strain. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) suspended JINR’s observer status. Subsequent reports highlighted profound concerns regarding dual-use technology, claiming that researchers from JINR were embedded within the Russian military-industrial complex and that advanced technologies from Dubna were being utilized in weapons systems like the Kh-101 cruise missile. While the fundamental physics community has historically relied on open borders to share isotopes and data, modern geopolitical conflict inherently jeopardizes the fragile, international supply chains required for the synthesis of elements like Tennessine.
Because Tennessine is synthesized a few atoms at a time in sterile laboratories, it does not cause any of the environmental damage associated with traditional mining. There is no deforestation, no soil erosion, no loss of biodiversity, and no acid mine drainage or cyanide leaching associated with Tennessine. There are no massive tailings dams holding back toxic sludge, and therefore no risk of disaster case studies like the catastrophic dam failures seen in Brazil or Romania.
The true environmental impact of Tennessine is found in the massive carbon footprint and the legacy waste of the scientific infrastructure required to create it.
Facilities like the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at ORNL and the heavy-ion cyclotrons at JINR in Dubna are massive industrial complexes that require vast amounts of electricity and cooling water to operate safely. Accelerating a beam of trillions of calcium ions to 10% the speed of light 24 hours a day for 150 days consumes substantial energy. Depending on the local power grid, this immense electricity draw contributes significantly to the carbon footprint of the superheavy element research lifecycle.
While there is no “mine waste,” the chemical processing of the actinide targets required to make Tennessine generates highly dangerous radioactive byproducts. Processing irradiated curium and californium targets at the Radiochemical Engineering Development Center (REDC) involves handling highly radioactive materials dissolved in strong acids and liquid organics.
Historically, these liquid organic wastes were difficult to dispose of safely. Today, facilities carefully manage these streams. For example, at ORNL, liquid organic transuranic waste is neutralized and solidified using materials like PM-199 Organoclay to ensure there is no free liquid. Once solidified and placed in multi-layered containment drums, this legacy waste is shipped via secure transport to deep geological repositories like the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico for safe, long-term disposal.
The health effects on workers who synthesize the precursors to Tennessine are mitigated through intense, uncompromising safety protocols. Technicians manipulate target materials inside specially designed “hot cells.” These cells feature four-foot-thick walls of leaded glass filled with mineral oil to block lethal radiation. Workers use mechanical, robotic arms to handle the materials remotely. Continuous environmental monitoring ensures that local communities living near these national laboratories are entirely protected from radioactive exposure or airborne emissions.
Tennessine cannot be recycled from electronic waste (urban mining) or end-of-life consumer products because it is never placed in them. Furthermore, it decays into lighter elements (like Moscovium and Nihonium) in a fraction of a second, meaning there is physically nothing left of the element to recover. Global recycling rates for Tennessine are, by definition, zero.
However, the target material used in the synthesis process is highly valuable and carefully recovered and recycled within the laboratory ecosystem. Because Berkelium-249 has a short half-life of 330 days, researchers are in a constant race against time to utilize it before it decays away. Advances in radiochemistry have led to new dual-column extraction methods at ORNL that allow chemists to separate and purify actinides much faster—reducing the processing time from eight weeks to just eight days. This technological leap effectively “recovers” valuable material by preventing it from decaying away during the purification process itself, yielding a much purer product for target manufacturing.
In the realm of superheavy element synthesis, there are no natural “substitutes” for the elements themselves, but there are alternative synthetic pathways to create them.
Initially, researchers at Dubna considered contingency plans in case the American-supplied Berkelium-249 proved unavailable. The primary substitute reaction proposed was firing a beam of Titanium-50 ions into a target of Americium-243. While theoretical physics showed this could produce isotopes of Tennessine, the reaction probability (cross-section) was expected to be significantly lower than the Calcium/Berkelium method.
Today, the development of intense Titanium-50 beams at facilities in France and at the new Superheavy Element Factory in Russia is a major priority. Perfecting these new beams provides a vital alternative pathway not just for synthesizing Tennessine, but for reaching beyond it to elements 119 and 120, circumventing the reliance on the Calcium-48 method.
While Tennessine lacks the deep ancient mythology of elements like gold, iron, or silver, it carries significant modern cultural weight, acting as a symbol of scientific achievement, regional pride, and the frontiers of human knowledge.
The naming of Tennessine was a careful, deliberate process governed by the IUPAC. The guidelines stipulate that new elements placed in Group 17 (the halogens) must end in the suffix “-ine”. The discovery team proposed the name “Tennessine” to honor the region of Tennessee, explicitly recognizing the pivotal research roles of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
This made Tennessee only the second U.S. state (after California, which inspired Californium) to be immortalized on the periodic table. When the name was officially accepted in 2016, it generated immense regional pride. The Tennessee General Assembly passed formal resolutions celebrating the achievement, and the element’s symbol has been widely embraced by local academic institutions. At the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge, T-shirts featuring the periodic table square for Tennessine remain popular cultural items.
In the scientific community, the quest for elements like Tennessine represents a modern-day mythological journey. The theorized “Island of Stability” to which Tennessine points is frequently referred to in scientific literature and media as the “Holy Grail” of nuclear physics. It symbolizes humanity’s ultimate mastery over matter—the ability to artificially construct atoms that the universe itself cannot sustain.
In science fiction literature and film, the idea of undiscovered superheavy elements is a pervasive trope, often manifesting as fictional materials like “Adamantium” or “Unobtanium” that possess miraculous properties (such as room-temperature superconductivity or indestructible hardness). While Tennessine does not possess these fictional traits, it is the real-world manifestation of humanity’s drive to find the unknown materials of the cosmos.
In visual arts, Tennessine has been interpreted symbolically to bridge the gap between abstract quantum physics and human geography. In the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Visual Elements project, Tennessine is beautifully depicted using an abstracted version of the Tennessee state flag, incorporating the three white stars on a blue and red background.
The story of Tennessine is also a story of evolving social representation in the sciences. The complex radiochemical purification of the berkelium target at ORNL involved a diverse team of scientists, including Clarice Phelps. Her vital contributions to the project made her the first African American woman to be officially involved in the discovery of a new element on the periodic table. Furthermore, efforts by advocates like British physicist Jess Wade have highlighted these diverse contributions on platforms like Wikipedia, ensuring that the human story behind Tennessine reflects the broader, diverse reality of modern global science.
In traditional commodities, economists worry about “peak production” or the risk of running out of known reserves. These concepts do not apply to Tennessine, as it is manufactured entirely on demand. The limitation on its production is not geological, but technological and financial. The challenge is securing enough continuous government funding, international cooperation, and dedicated accelerator time to continue producing the heavy actinide target materials.
Potential future sources like deep-sea mining or asteroid mining are completely irrelevant to Tennessine, as superheavy elements are not found in space rocks or oceanic crusts; their half-lives are simply too short.
The true future source of superheavy elements lies in next-generation particle accelerators. To push beyond Tennessine, JINR in Russia recently launched the Superheavy Element Factory (SHE-Factory). This new facility features the state-of-the-art DC-280 cyclotron, designed to run beam intensities nearly an order of magnitude higher than previous machines, drastically increasing the chances of synthesizing rare atoms. Researchers at institutions across the globe—including RIKEN in Japan, GSI in Germany, and Berkeley Lab in the United States—are also heavily upgrading their separation and detection tools to keep pace.
While the circular economy and climate change drive the demand for traditional elements like lithium or rare earth metals, they will not alter the demand for Tennessine.
Instead, the future outlook for Tennessine is focused on what comes next. With Row 7 of the periodic table officially complete, scientists are now racing to synthesize elements 119 and 120, which would open an entirely new, uncharted eighth row. The data obtained from the decay patterns of Tennessine provides theoretical roadmaps for these future discoveries, proving that adding more neutrons does indeed increase stability, leading physicists ever closer to the shores of the Island of Stability.
As a highly radioactive superheavy element, Tennessine’s nuclear properties are its defining characteristics. Understanding its radioactivity is key to understanding the element itself.
Tennessine is entirely unstable and highly radioactive. It decays primarily through alpha emission. An alpha particle consists of two protons and two neutrons (essentially a helium nucleus). When Tennessine emits an alpha particle, its atomic number drops by two, and its atomic mass drops by four, transforming it into an entirely different element.
The resulting Moscovium atoms are also highly unstable and immediately undergo further alpha decay, transforming into Nihonium, which then decays into Roentgenium, and so forth. This sequential cascade is known as a radioactive decay chain. Because Tennessine exists for such a short time, scientists rarely “see” the Tennessine atom itself; instead, they measure the specific energy signatures of the alpha particles emitted during this decay chain to retroactively prove that a Tennessine atom existed. Some theoretical models suggest that certain isotopes of Tennessine may also decay via spontaneous fission, where the nucleus simply splits in half.
Tennessine plays absolutely no role in the commercial or military nuclear fuel cycle. It cannot be mined, it cannot be enriched like uranium, and it cannot be placed in a commercial nuclear reactor to boil water and generate electricity.
Consequently, Tennessine falls entirely outside the purview of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and international atomic safeguards. Because it survives for only milliseconds and requires billion-dollar facilities to produce a few atoms, it is physically impossible to accumulate enough Tennessine to achieve a critical mass. It cannot be weaponized, making it of zero concern to nuclear non-proliferation watchdogs.
There have been no nuclear accidents involving Tennessine. Because only a few atoms exist for fractions of a second, there is no threat of a nuclear meltdown or massive radiation release like the historical disasters seen at Chernobyl or Fukushima.
The primary safety and waste concerns do not revolve around Tennessine itself, but rather the handling of the actinide target materials (like Berkelium and Curium) before the experiment even begins, and the management of the transuranic waste left over after purification. As detailed in the Environmental Impact section, this long-term nuclear waste is carefully solidified using chemical agents and transported to deep underground geological repositories to ensure it remains isolated from the biosphere for thousands of years.
1. How did Tennessine get its name? It was officially named in honor of the U.S. state of Tennessee. This name recognizes the vital, foundational contributions of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Tennessee to the research and discovery of superheavy elements. The “-ine” suffix was applied because the element sits in the halogen group (Group 17) of the periodic table, following the naming conventions set by the IUPAC.
2. Can you hold a piece of Tennessine in your hand? No. Tennessine only exists for fleeting fractions of a second before decaying into lighter elements. Even if a visible, macroscopic lump could magically be synthesized and placed in your hand, its intense, rapid radioactive decay would vaporize it instantly, releasing lethal amounts of heat and alpha radiation.
3. Is Tennessine used in any modern technology, like smartphones, batteries, or medicine? No. Due to its extreme radioactivity, its incredibly short half-life (measured in milliseconds), and the astronomical difficulty and cost of synthesizing even a single atom, it has zero practical applications in industry, medicine, or consumer technology. It is used purely for scientific research.
4. How exactly is Tennessine made? It is created using a massive particle accelerator in a process called “hot fusion.” Scientists take a highly radioactive target made of Berkelium-249 and bombard it continuously with a beam of Calcium-48 ions traveling at 10% the speed of light. Very rarely—perhaps a few times a month—the nuclei of these two atoms hit head-on and fuse together to form element 117.
5. What is the “Island of Stability” and why does Tennessine matter to it? The Island of Stability is a predicted theoretical region of the periodic table where undiscovered superheavy elements are expected to have a “magic number” of protons and neutrons, making them much more stable than neighboring elements. The decay patterns observed from Tennessine strongly suggest this island exists, offering a scientific roadmap to discovering potentially stable superheavy elements in the future.
6. Does Tennessine act chemically like chlorine or fluorine? Tennessine sits in the exact same column (the halogens) as familiar elements like chlorine and fluorine. However, scientists predict it behaves very differently. Because of its massive, highly charged nucleus, the electrons orbiting it are forced to move near the speed of light, invoking strange “relativistic effects”. This contraction of electron orbitals likely makes Tennessine act more like a metal or metalloid, preventing it from forming standard negative ions like its lighter cousins.
7. How much does Tennessine cost? Tennessine cannot be bought, sold, or traded. However, the raw materials used to make it are among the most expensive substances known. Calcium-48 costs roughly $200,000 per gram, and the Berkelium-249 target material has a theoretical cost of around $185 billion per kilogram, reflecting the massive infrastructure required to produce it.
8. Where is the largest natural deposit of Tennessine located? There are no natural deposits of Tennessine anywhere on Earth, nor are there any in asteroids or deep space. Any Tennessine that might form naturally in violent cosmic events (like neutron star mergers) decays away completely in a matter of minutes.
9. Are there environmental concerns related to Tennessine mining? Because it is not mined from the earth, there are no traditional environmental mining concerns like deforestation, soil erosion, or water pollution. The environmental footprint of Tennessine is tied strictly to the massive electricity required to run particle accelerators and nuclear reactors, and the careful management of radioactive transuranic waste generated by the laboratories that synthesize it.
10. What happens next for superheavy element research? With row 7 of the periodic table officially complete thanks to elements like Tennessine, scientists are now using upgraded particle accelerators, like the new Superheavy Element Factory in Russia, to attempt the synthesis of elements 119 and 120. If successful, this will begin an entirely new, eighth row of the periodic table, pushing the boundaries of human knowledge even further.