Livermorium-290
Livermorium-290 (symbol: 290Lv) is a radioactive isotope of livermorium, a synthetic superheavy element with atomic number 116. Its nucleus contains 116 protons and 174 neutrons, giving it a mass number of 290. It is the lightest confirmed isotope of livermorium.
Properties
Livermorium-290 is extremely unstable, with a half-life of approximately 8.3 milliseconds. It decays via alpha decay, emitting an alpha particle and producing flerovium-286 (286Fl), which in turn decays further down the chain to copernicium-282 (282Cn), ultimately ending in spontaneous fission. Like all isotopes of livermorium, it cannot be found in nature and can only be produced artificially in a particle accelerator. It has no known practical applications, and research into it is purely academic.
Synthesis
Livermorium-290 has been produced through several different nuclear reactions. One route involves bombarding a plutonium-244 target with a beam of titanium-50 ions. In 2024, researchers at the [[Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory]] used this method with the Berkeley Gas-filled Separator to isolate and detect two decay chains attributed to 290Lv. The isotope has also been observed as a decay product in experiments aimed at synthesising heavier elements, including oganesson-294. Yields are extraordinarily small — typically just a handful of atoms per experiment.
Significance
Livermorium-290 is of particular interest to nuclear physicists because it is thought to lie close to the theoretical island of stability — a region of the chart of nuclides where certain superheavy nuclei are predicted to be significantly more resistant to decay than surrounding isotopes, and therefore considerably longer-lived.