Isotopes of hassium
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Hassium (108Hs) is a synthetic element, and thus a standard atomic weight cannot be given. Like all synthetic elements, it has no stable isotopes. The first isotope to be synthesized was 265Hs in 1984. There are 12 known isotopes from 263Hs to 277Hs and 1–4 isomers. The longest-lived isotope is 269Hs with a half-life of 9.6 seconds.
Super-heavy elements such as hassium are produced by bombarding lighter elements in particle accelerators that induce fusion reactions. Whereas most of the isotopes of hassium can be synthesized directly this way, some heavier ones have only been observed as decay products of elements with higher atomic numbers.
Depending on the energies involved, the former are separated into "hot" and "cold". In hot fusion reactions, very light, high-energy projectiles are accelerated toward very heavy targets (actinides), giving rise to compound nuclei at high excitation energy (~40–50 MeV) that may either fission or evaporate several (3 to 5) neutrons. In cold fusion reactions, the produced fused nuclei have a relatively low excitation energy (~10–20 MeV), which decreases the probability that these products will undergo fission reactions. As the fused nuclei cool to the ground state, they require emission of only one or two neutrons, and thus, allows for the generation of more neutron-rich products. The latter is a distinct concept from that of where nuclear fusion claimed to be achieved at room temperature conditions (see cold fusion).
Before the first successful synthesis of hassium in 1984 by the GSI team, scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia also tried to synthesize hassium by bombarding lead-208 with iron-58 in 1978. No hassium atoms were identified. They repeated the experiment in 1984 and were able to detect a spontaneous fission activity assigned to 260Sg, the daughter of 264Hs. Later that year, they tried the experiment again, and tried to chemically identify the decay products of hassium to provide support to their synthesis of element 108. They were able to detect several alpha decays of 253Es and 253Fm, decay products of 265Hs.
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