Can we create new substances by artificially changing the number of protons in the nucleus?

This article is based on answering similar questions from netizens. My answer is: Of course you can, and this is old news. Scientists have known this for a long time, and have been doing this for nearly 100 years, which is why we have 118 elements today, 26 of which were created by artificially changing the number of protons in the nucleus.

Of course, these 26 elements should exist in nature, otherwise they cannot be artificially produced. But the problem is that some elements are too rare in nature and difficult to obtain; some elements have too short a half-life. For example, some gaseous elements are difficult to exist for 1 second under natural conditions and can only be obtained artificially.

The periodic table is the design basis for artificial elements. The periodic table is one of the greatest scientific discoveries of mankind. It lists some seemingly unrelated elements together, gradually forming a complete system of natural elements, promoting the development of modern chemistry, and revealing the mysteries of natural matter, allowing mankind to have a deeper understanding of the laws of nature. It is of milestone significance.

The first person to publish the periodic table was the Russian chemist Mendeleev, who launched the first generation of the periodic table in 1869. After that, chemists from various countries continued to launch and improve various periodic tables. Gradually, the periodic table became an irreplaceable tool in modern chemistry.

There are more than 170 kinds of periodic tables in the world. In the periodic table, elements are arranged by atomic number, with the smallest one at number 1, one horizontal row as a period, and one column as a family; the atomic radius decreases from left to right and increases from top to bottom.

The periodic table now has seven main groups, seven sub-groups, group VIII, and group 0. Elements are numbered according to the order in the periodic table, and the number is the atomic number. The relationship between the atomic number and the atomic structure of the element is: the number of protons = atomic number = the number of electrons outside the nucleus = the nuclear charge number.

When Mendeleev's periodic table was first formed, there were only 63 elements. He arranged these elements in order of size and successfully predicted gallium, scandium, and germanium, which had not been discovered at the time. As the periodic table matured, people continued to discover the patterns of the arrangement of elements, and continued to discover the missing elements in the middle, and their understanding of the properties of the elements became increasingly profound.

Therefore, one of the great significances of the periodic table is to guide scientists to find the missing elements, or simply put, the elements with gaps in atomic numbers. If an element cannot be found in nature, try to make it artificially. At this time, people already know that the properties of an element are determined by the number of protons in an atom, so as long as the number of protons in an atom is changed, a new element can be obtained.

For example, in the periodic table, there are already element 42, molybdenum, and element 44, ruthenium. People know that the number of protons in the nuclei of these two elements are 42 and 44 respectively. There must be a new element between them. If the number of protons becomes 43, this new element can be obtained.

But how to change the number of protons in a nucleus? Scientists have been trying to figure it out for many years.

It was not until 1937 that Ernest Lawrence, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, used the cyclotron he invented to "bombard" the molybdenum nucleus of element 41 with the deuterium nucleus of element 1, and obtained element 43. This was the first artificial element obtained by mankind, and it was named "technetium" (Tc), and the original meaning of "technetium" in Greek is "artificially made".

The 26 artificial elements are all obtained by "addition" At present, humans have discovered that there are 118 elements in the universe, of which 92 elements are obtained in nature and 26 elements are obtained through artificial manufacturing. The method of artificially manufacturing elements is without exception to obtain them by the "addition" method.

What is "addition"? It is to fuse two elements with smaller atomic numbers into a larger element. The professional term for this "addition" method is nuclear fusion or nuclear fusion. The first artificial element "technetium" was obtained by bombarding a molybdenum nucleus with 42 protons with a deuterium nucleus with only 1 proton, and fusing them into a "technetium" nucleus with 43 protons.

It is very difficult to do this "addition", which requires extremely high pressure and temperature to make the nuclei fuse together. Therefore, although people discovered that adding can produce new elements in the early 20th century, they had no way to do it, so they could only look at it and failed to realize it.

It was not until 1931 that Lawrence invented the cyclotron, which could accelerate atomic nuclei to extremely high energies in this device and then collide two atomic nuclei, making it possible to artificially create new elements. Later, he used his accelerator to create the first artificial element, "technetium", for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

People called the cyclotron he invented an "atomic cannon", meaning that an atomic nucleus can be bombarded against another atomic nucleus at an extremely high speed like a cannonball, of course, this speed is many times faster than a cannonball.

All artificial elements are obtained through this "addition" method. For example, scientists bombarded californium with atomic number 98 with boron with atomic number 5 to obtain lawrencium with atomic number 103; bombarded lead with atomic number 82 with chromium with atomic number 24 to obtain element 106, and bombarded californium with atomic number 98 with calcium with atomic coefficient 20 to obtain ozone with atomic number 118.

Human discovery is always on the way, with no end. So far, there are 26 artificial elements, namely: 43 technetium (T), 61 promethium (Pm), 95 americium (Am), 96 curium (Cm), 97 berkelium (Bk), 98 californium (Cf), 99 einsteinium (Es), 100 fermium (Fm), 101 mendelevium (Md), 102 nobelium (No), 103 lawrencium (Lr), 104 rhodium (Rf), 105 fermium (Fm), 106 mendelevium (Md), 107 nobelium (No), 108 lawrencium (Lr), 109 rhodium (Rf), 110 106 sphenanthera (Db), 107 sphenanthera (Sg), 108 sphenanthera (Bh), 109 sphenanthera (Mt), 110 sphenanthera (Ds), 111 sphenanthera (Rg), 112 sphenanthera (Cn), 113 sphenanthera (Uut/Nh), 114 sphenanthera (Fl), 115 sphenanthera (Mc), 116 sphenanthera (Lv), 117 sphenanthera (Ts), 118 sphenanthera (Og).

You may be wondering why some of the Chinese characters are composed of a radical plus a character. This is because the Chinese characters of these elements cannot be typed out on computers. Following the rumor that you can only recognize half of a character, let's just call it that.

At this point, all the gaps in the periodic table have been filled, and new elements discovered in the future will be elements after 118. Except for 43 and 61, the artificial elements that follow are all radioactive elements, which have extremely low abundances in nature, are extremely unstable or have very short half-lives, so they are difficult to obtain in nature, and some are difficult to preserve even if they are artificially created.

For example, for element 118, Og, scientists have conducted numerous experiments in cyclotron accelerators, but only obtained three atoms in experiments in 2003 and 2005. Only three atoms can be detected by extremely sophisticated instruments, and the half-life of this element is only 12 milliseconds, which means it disappears in an instant.

Many scientists are still synthesizing higher-numbered elements, and some have even been named, such as element 119 Uue, element 120 Ubn, and element 121, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain these elements, and they still exist only in imagination. There is much controversy about how high the periodic table will eventually reach, and we can only wait and see.

In short, with the development of modern science, human beings have a deeper understanding of the laws of nature, and their understanding of chemical elements will continue to break through. Science is always on the road, moving forward in constant discovery and correction, accompanying and promoting the continuous progress of human civilization. What do you think? Welcome to discuss, thank you for reading.

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