Livermorium

Livermorium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Lv and atomic number 116. It is an extremely radioactive element that has only been created in laboratories and has not been observed in nature; about 35 livermorium atoms had been made as of 2020. The element is named after the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States, which collaborated with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, to discover livermorium during experiments conducted between 2000 and 2006. The name of the laboratory refers to the city of Livermore, California, where it is located, which in turn was named after the rancher and landowner Robert Livermore. IUPAC officially added it to the periodic table on June 1, 2011, and adopted the name on May 30, 2012. Six isotopes of livermorium are known, with mass numbers 288–293 inclusive; the longest-lived is livermorium-293 with a half-life of about 80 milliseconds. A seventh possible isotope with mass number 294 has been reported but not yet confirmed. In the periodic table, it is a p-block transactinide element. It is a member of the 7th period and is placed in group 16 as the heaviest chalcogen, but it has not been confirmed to behave as the heavier homologue to the chalcogen polonium. Livermorium is calculated to have some similar properties to its lighter homologues (oxygen, sulfur, selenium, tellurium, and polonium), and be a post-transition metal, though it should also show several major differences from them.