Källén Public Seminar: Peter Schwerdtfeger: Beyond the Periodic Table of Heavy Elements - Going Superheavy

Thursday 21 May 2015, 14:15 → 15:15 Europe/Stockholm

Lundmarksalen (Astronomi)

The first Periodic Table of the Elements was proposed by Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev in 1869, compiled on the basis of arranging the elements in ascending order of atomic weight and grouping them by similarity of chemical properties. A century later it was assumed that the Periodic Table would end at nuclei with about 100 protons, because the attractive strong interactions could no longer counter-balance the Coulomb repulsion between the protons. In the last decade we have seen the production of new elements for the Periodic Table up to nuclear charge 118. How far can we go? Where does the Periodic Table end? Can we do chemistry with such exotic elements? What is the chemical and physical behavior of these exotic elements, and do we have to go beyond non-relativistic quantum mechanics to understand them?