Dubna: Berkeley's worthy rival

In the race to invent, hunt for the last super heavy elements in the periodic table, the Institute of Nuclear Research (JINR) in the scientific city of Dubna, Russia, is worthy of being a rival of the Chamber. National experiment at the University of California at Berkley (LBNL), USA.

From the ruins of war .

Main building of the JINR Nuclear Research Union Institute in Dubna.

But the road to that position was extremely arduous and not flat, scientists at the Dubna Science Center stepped into super heavy element territory two decades later than their counterpart in the continent. .

While the former Soviet Union and JINR member countries are going through the worst years of World War II, at Berkley , scientists of LBNL in peaceful conditions have built a modern laboratory. qualified to conduct research on new elements. Thus, from 1940, they soon created the first elements behind Uranium (called super uranium ), which is 93 (Z = 93 and called Neptunium ) and 94 ( Plutonium ).

Next, published successively the inventions, 1944 with element 96 ( Curium ) and 1945 with element 95 ( Americium ). Immediately after World War II, in the 1949 - 1965 years, Bekley continued the race without a rival, becoming the exclusive owner of a new series of elements: 97 ( Berkelium ), 98 ( Californium ), 102 ( Nobelium ), 99 ( Einsteinium ), 100 ( Fermium ) and 101 ( Medelevium ).

When World War II ended, the Soviet Union (old) began to get up and gradually began to build new or refurbish scientific facilities. Dubna, a quiet piece of land between the vast birch forest on the banks of the River Von, 130 kilometers northwest of Moscow, was chosen to build a laboratory to study nuclear and mechanical physics. copy.

But more than 10 years later, in 1956, the New Institute of Nuclear Research (JINR) was established. In addition to the former Soviet Union, the International Nuclear Science Center also has other member states from Eastern Europe and Asia (Vietnam, China and Korea).

. Go to the big scientific cradle

In Dubna, among the mostly invested laboratories, the Flerov Nuclear Reaction Laboratory (FLNR) has a prominent position. Here, super-heavy, super-heavy elements are chosen as the main research objects.

Under the direction of two famous physicists, originally Grigory Flerov and later Yuri Oganessian, multinational scientists in Dubna built a laboratory to synthesize super heavy elements, first of all are the machines - accelerators. They upgrade old accelerators, build new heavy ion particle accelerators, and then connect individual accelerators into a stronger combination (called tandem ), and then upgrade .

Experiment on U-400 accelerator (JINR).

In 1960, U-200 and U-300 accelerators were put into operation, producing beams of alpha particles (including 4 nucleon particles) with energies below 10 MeV (calculated for each nucleon). At the end of December 1970, the U-400 machine was born, which could accelerate most of the nuclei in the periodic table of energy with an energy of 2.5-20 MeV / nucleon). By 1992, U-400M appeared, accelerating very high energy ions, 100 MeV / nucleon, near the speed of light.

FLNR quickly became the world's leading heavy ion accelerator center. Along with the development of accelerator technology, they installed mass spectrometry machines to separate products reacting with charge and mass to find new super heavy nuclei. Spectrum systems, chemical analysis laboratories are also built for that purpose.

In the 60s of the last century, Dubna officially spoke up, in turn launching new superheavy elemental findings. FLNR in Dubna really became a rival on par with LBNL in the US. In the long years of the Cold War, they were fierce competitors, then gradually, as a result of the harmonious atmosphere spreading in the world, they suddenly became partners to cooperate with each other, compensate for the deficiencies of each side, creating common inventions in the lofty goal of humanity - discovering the mystery of the natural world.

For more than half a century, Dubna has produced thousands of studies in different areas of high energy physics, low energy, and some other key research applications. Dubna is also a cradle to train many leading experts on nuclear science for many countries, including Vietnam.

From exclusive invention .

Here, it should be emphasized that, along with the growth of the Laboratory of FLNR Nuclear Reaction, the discoveries in the field of super heavy elements are quite surprising, impressive and bring about scientific achievements. Pride for the Dubna scientific community.

Although the emergence of FLNR in the field of super heavy nuclear research falls into a period of intense competition with the introduction of several research centers in rich countries, such as GSI Heavy Ion Center in Darmstad ( Germany) and RIKEN Research Institute of Physics and Chemistry in Tokyo (Japan), and especially the existence for many years in Berkeley (USA) of a monumental ' monument ' of LBNL on equipment, powerful on talent and business. Full experience with over ten super heavy elements discovered.

Therefore, most of Dubna's inventions encounter complicated copyright disputes and require arbitration by ' professional courts ', the Basic Physics and Applications Association ( IUPAP ). IUPAC Association of Basic Chemistry and Applications.

That competition started with the monopoly of inventing element 102 .

In 1966, element 102 (later named Nobelium) was synthesized on the FLNR accelerator by the C bullets (12.6) with the charge Z = 6; The number of mass A = 12 shoots on the beer nucleus Cm (244.96). Along with 4 emitted neutrons, the new superheavy nucleus No (252,102) was formed.

In fact, element 102 was also claimed to be found at the Nobel Institute (Sweden) in 1957, but later the authors retreated. The following year, 1958, the Berkley group at LBNL published the results of the 102 synthesis, but they were inconsistent in volume and contradicted with data on the emitted alpha particle energy of Swedish scientists.

Therefore, IUPAC-IUPAP , in 1992, announced the official recognition of Elk Dubna as inventors of element 102 and accepted the name Nobelium .