From Transuranic to Superheavy Elements by Helge Kragh

Author:Helge Kragh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

4.2 The Ninov Affair

Marinov’s discovery claims of SHEs were most likely unfounded and based on insufficient data and questionable interpretations. Although some of his work included features that may be characterised as “pathological” in the sense originally defined by Irving Langmuir as “the science of things that aren’t so,” it was not fraudulent or involving scientific misconduct (Bauer 2002). In a field as competitive and potentially rewarding as SHE one should not be surprised that the latter category turns up, as it did in connection with an early discovery claim of the element with atomic number 118.

In early June 1999 a group of fifteen researchers at LBNL (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), headed by Kenneth Gregorich and including the 84-year-old SHE veteran Albert Ghiorso , announced that it had detected two new elements, one with Z = 118 and the other its alpha decay product with Z = 116 (Ninov et al. 1999). Their paper in Physical Review Letters was received 27 May and published in the issue of 9 August. Bombarding a lead target with a beam of Kr-86 ions accelerated to 459 meV, the group interpreted the results as due to fusion followed by an alpha decay:

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