Seaborgium is a synthetic, unstable, and radioactive element with no commercial use. It has chemical properties similar to tungsten and must be synthesized in a laboratory. It was discovered by American and Russian researchers in 1974 and named after Glenn Seaborg. It is produced by bombarding other elements in a linear accelerator.
Seaborgium is a metallic chemical element in the transactinide series of the periodic table of elements. Like other elements in this series, seaborgium is a very unstable element, with the half-life of its isotopes measured in seconds. This instability makes seaborgium impossible to find in the wild; it must be synthesized in the laboratory by researchers who study it. Like other synthetic heavy elements, seaborgium has no commercial use as it is extremely expensive to produce and too short-lived to be terribly productive.
This element appears to share chemical properties with tungsten, explaining its eka-tungsten alias. Like other transactinides, seaborgium is also radioactive, making it potentially dangerous to work with. It is identified with the symbol Sg on the periodic table of elements, and has atomic number 106, placing it among the transuranic elements. These elements all have higher atomic numbers than uranium and share a number of chemical properties including instability and radioactivity.
Credit for the discovery of this element is generally given to a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley led by Albert Ghiorso in 1974. The element was also synthesized and identified by Russian researchers at Dubna around the same time. Like other elements that were discovered and confirmed in multiple places simultaneously, seaborgium was a cause of controversy until the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) gave the credit to American researchers.
The story behind the name of this item is actually quite interesting. The American researchers proposed “seaborgium”, in honor of Glenn Seaborg, a prominent researcher who was part of their team. IUPAC took exception, seeking to rule that elements could not be named for living people, and instituted “unnilhexium” as a placeholder name before proposing “rutherfordium,” a name that later went to element 104. Agreed “seaborgium” for element name when resolving element name disputes 1997 through 104.
To produce this element, researchers must bombard other elements in a linear accelerator, typically producing a very small volume of seaborgium at any given time. Using sophisticated scientific equipment, researchers can record the presence of seaborgium in the laboratory and even learn a few things about it before it decays into a more stable element.
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