"Stable" trans-uranium element(s)?

OK, this blog is decidedly NOT an April Fool's joke. Nuclear theorists have long pondered the potential for an "island" of stable isotopes beyond uranium. Though the artificial trans-uranic elements up to 118 have demonstrated progressively shorter half-lives, there exists the possibility that extraordinarily heavy isotopes with "magic numbers" of protons and neutrons may in fact achieve relative stability. Of course, this has been entirely theoretical. One also has to wonder: if there exist stable isotopes of extremely heavy elements, shouldn't we find them occurring in nature?

Really, I can't explain it better than the "Island of Stability" Wikipedia article, and I love the article's illustration enough to reproduce it here. It's a two-dimensional map of the upper reaches of the Chart of the Nuclides, with "stability" measured in the third dimension.

Just today I read that a team of Israeli scientists believe they have sifted naturally-occurring element 122 out of a sample of thorium. That's not too far off from the a "magic number" of 126 protons. If true, this could be the first verification of the "island", and the beginning of some very exciting discoveries.

I guess I'm excited about this development because it's like witnessing science fiction come true. Maybe it would be too much to compare this with growing up reading about moon bases and then watching the first actual moon landing (I'm too young to have done that), but you get the idea.

Ever since I started working here at the Nucleus Factory, I've been thrilled to work in a place where the stuff of science fiction happens every day. What we do at NSCL relates to the central them of one of my favorite sci-fi stories: "Nerves" by Lester Del Rey, about a major corporation that produces various isotopes for industrial uses. One part of the story that clearly marks this story as very forward-looking and somewhat optimistic is the fact that the grunts at "National Atomics" regularly synthesize isotopes with atomic weight 713 or more. This contrasts with the cold reality of current nuclear theory and experiment, where atomic weights have really maxed out near 300, and those nuclei are extremely unstable. 713 seems a bit out of reach.

Just reading that article about the (potential) existence of element 122 tickles something inside me. Thanks to the wonder of scientific discovery, I am once again the kid who grew up in love with the innocent and wide-eyed setting of so many golden-age sci-fi stories, when anything was possible and the future was limited only by our imaginations...