The Isle of Doctor Seaborg

It was the summer of 1936 when Ernest Lawrence, the inventor of the
atom-smashing cyclotron, received a visit from Emilio Segrè, a
scientific colleague from Italy. Segrè explained that he had come
all the way to America to ask a very small favor: He wondered
whether Lawrence would part with a few strips of thin metal from an
old cyclotron unit. Dr Lawrence was happy to oblige; as far as he
was concerned the stuff Segrè sought was mere radioactive trash. He
sealed some scraps of the foil in an envelope and mailed it to
Segrè's lab in Sicily. Unbeknownst to Lawrence, Segrè was on a
surreptitious scientific errand. At that time the majority of
chemical elements had been isolated and added to the periodic
table, yet there was an unsightly hole where an element with 43
protons ought to be. Elements with 42 and 44 protons--42molybdenum
and 44ruthenium respectively--had been isolated decades earlier,
but element 43 was yet to be seen. Considerable accolades awaited
whichever scientist could isolate the elusive element, so chemists
worldwide were scanning through tons of ores with their
spectroscopes, watching for the anticipated pattern. Upon receiving
Dr Lawrence's radioactive mail back in Italy, Segrè and his
colleague Carlo Perrier subjected the strips of molybdenum foil to
a carefully choreographed succession of bunsen burners, salts,
chemicals, and acids. The resulting precipitate confirmed their
hypothesis: element 42 was the answer. The radiation in Lawrence's
cyclotron had converted a few 42molybdenum atoms into element 43,
and one ten-billionth of a gram of the stuff now sat in the bottom
of their beaker. They dubbed their plundered discovery “technetium”
for the Greek word technetos, meaning "artificial." It was
considered to be the first element made by man rather than nature,
and its “short” half-life--anywhere from a few nanoseconds to a few
million years depending on the isotope--was the reason there’s
negligible naturally-occurring technetium left on modern Earth. In
the years since this discovery scientists have employed
increasingly sophisticated apparatuses to bang particles together
to create and isolate increasingly heavy never-before-seen
elements, an effort which continues even today. Most of the obese
nuclei beyond 92uranium are too unstable to stay assembled for more
than a moment, to the extent that it makes one wonder why
researchers expend such time, effort, and expense to fabricate
these fickle fragments of matter. But according to our current
understanding of quantum mechanics, if we can pack enough protons
and neutrons into these husky nuclei we may encounter something
astonishing.