Tennessine is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Ts and atomic number 117.

It has the second-highest atomic number and joint-highest atomic mass of all known
elements, and is the penultimate element of the 7th period of the periodic table.

The discovery of tennessine was officially announced in Dubna, Russia, by a

Russian–American collaboration in April 2010, which makes it the most recently
discovered element as of 2024. One of its daughter isotopes was created directly in
2011, partially confirming the results of the experiment. The experiment itself was
repeated successfully by the same collaboration in 2012 and by a joint German–
American team in May 2014. In December 2015, the Joint Working Party of the
International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International
Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), which evaluates claims of discovery of
new elements, recognized the element and assigned the priority to the Russian–
American team. In June 2016, the IUPAC published a declaration stating that the
discoverers had suggested the name tennessine after Tennessee, United States, a
name which was officially adopted in November 2016.[a]

Tennessine may be located in the "island of stability", a concept that explains why
some superheavy elements are more stable compared to an overall trend of decreasing
stability for elements beyond bismuth on the periodic table. The synthesized
tennessine atoms have lasted tens and hundreds of milliseconds. In the periodic
table, tennessine is expected to be a member of group 17, the halogens.[b] Some of
its properties may differ significantly from those of the lighter halogens due to
relativistic effects. As a result, tennessine is expected to be a volatile metal
that neither forms anions nor achieves high oxidation states. A few key properties,
such as its melting and boiling points and its first ionization energy, are
nevertheless expected to follow the periodic trends of the halogens.

Introduction
This section is an excerpt from Superheavy element § Introduction.[edit]
Synthesis of superheavy nuclei
A graphic depiction of a nuclear fusion reaction
A graphic depiction of a nuclear fusion reaction. Two nuclei fuse into one,
emitting a neutron. Reactions that created new elements to this moment were
similar, with the only possible difference that several singular neutrons sometimes
were released, or none at all.
A superheavy[c] atomic nucleus is created in a nuclear reaction that combines two
other nuclei of unequal size[d] into one; roughly, the more unequal the two nuclei
in terms of mass, the greater the possibility that the two react.[15] The material
made of the heavier nuclei is made into a target, which is then bombarded by the
beam of lighter nuclei. Two nuclei can only fuse into one if they approach each
other closely enough; normally, nuclei (all positively charged) repel each other
due to electrostatic repulsion. The strong interaction can overcome this repulsion
but only within a very short distance from a nucleus; beam nuclei are thus greatly
accelerated in order to make such repulsion insignificant compared to the velocity
of the beam nucleus.[16] The energy applied to the beam nuclei to accelerate them
can cause them to reach speeds as high as one-tenth of the speed of light. However,
if too much energy is applied, the beam nucleus can fall apart.[16]

Coming close enough alone is not enough for two nuclei to fuse: when two nuclei
approach each other, they usually remain together for approximately 10−20 seconds
and then part ways (not necessarily in the same composition as before the reaction)
rather than form a single nucleus.[16][17] This happens because during the
attempted formation of a single nucleus, electrostatic repulsion tears apart the
nucleus that is being formed.[16] Each pair of a target and a beam is characterized
by its cross section—the probability that fusion will occur if two nuclei approach
one another expressed in terms of the transverse area that the incident particle
must hit in order for the fusion to occur.[e] This fusion may occur as a result of
the quantum effect in which nuclei can tunnel through electrostatic repulsion. If
the two nuclei can stay close for past that phase, multiple nuclear interactions
result in redistribution of energy and an energy equilibrium.[16]

External videos
video icon Visualization of unsuccessful nuclear fusion, based on calculations from
the Australian National University[19]
The resulting merger is an excited state[20]—termed a compound nucleus—and thus it
is very unstable.[16] To reach a more stable state, the temporary merger may
fission without formation of a more stable nucleus.[21] Alternatively, the compound
nucleus may eject a few neutrons, which would carry away the excitation energy; if
the latter is not sufficient for a neutron expulsion, the merger would produce a
gamma ray. This happens in approximately 10−16 seconds after the initial nuclear
collision and results in creation of a more stable nucleus.[21] The definition by
the IUPAC/IUPAP Joint Working Party (JWP) states that a chemical element can only
be recognized as discovered if a nucleus of it has not decayed within 10−14
seconds. This value was chosen as an estimate of how long it takes a nucleus to
acquire its outer electrons and thus display its chemical properties.[22][f]

Decay and detection

The beam passes through the target and reaches the next chamber, the separator; if
a new nucleus is produced, it is carried with this beam.[24] In the separator, the
newly produced nucleus is separated from other nuclides (that of the original beam
and any other reaction products)[g] and transferred to a surface-barrier detector,
which stops the nucleus. The exact location of the upcoming impact on the detector
is marked; also marked are its energy and the time of the arrival.[24] The transfer
takes about 10−6 seconds; in order to be detected, the nucleus must survive this
long.[27] The nucleus is recorded again once its decay is registered, and the
location, the energy, and the time of the decay are measured.[24]

Stability of a nucleus is provided by the strong interaction. However, its range is

very short; as nuclei become larger, its influence on the outermost nucleons
(protons and neutrons) weakens. At the same time, the nucleus is torn apart by
electrostatic repulsion between protons, and its range is not limited.[28] Total
binding energy provided by the strong interaction increases linearly with the
number of nucleons, whereas electrostatic repulsion increases with the square of
the atomic number, i.e. the latter grows faster and becomes increasingly important
for heavy and superheavy nuclei.[29][30] Superheavy nuclei are thus theoretically
predicted[31] and have so far been observed[32] to predominantly decay via decay
modes that are caused by such repulsion: alpha decay and spontaneous fission.[h]
Almost all alpha emitters have over 210 nucleons,[34] and the lightest nuclide
primarily undergoing spontaneous fission has 238.[35] In both decay modes, nuclei
are inhibited from decaying by corresponding energy barriers for each mode, but
they can be tunnelled through.[29][30]

Apparatus for creation of superheavy elements

Scheme of an apparatus for creation of superheavy elements, based on the Dubna Gas-
Filled Recoil Separator set up in the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in
JINR. The trajectory within the detector and the beam focusing apparatus changes
because of a dipole magnet in the former and quadrupole magnets in the latter.[36]
Alpha particles are commonly produced in radioactive decays because mass of an
alpha particle per nucleon is small enough to leave some energy for the alpha
particle to be used as kinetic energy to leave the nucleus.[37] Spontaneous fission
is caused by electrostatic repulsion tearing the nucleus apart and produces various
nuclei in different instances of identical nuclei fissioning.[30] As the atomic
number increases, spontaneous fission rapidly becomes more important: spontaneous
fission partial half-lives decrease by 23 orders of magnitude from uranium (element
92) to nobelium (element 102),[38] and by 30 orders of magnitude from thorium
(element 90) to fermium (element 100).[39] The earlier liquid drop model thus
suggested that spontaneous fission would occur nearly instantly due to
disappearance of the fission barrier for nuclei with about 280 nucleons.[30][40]
The later nuclear shell model suggested that nuclei with about 300 nucleons would
form an island of stability in which nuclei will be more resistant to spontaneous
fission and will primarily undergo alpha decay with longer half-lives.[30][40]
Subsequent discoveries suggested that the predicted island might be further than
originally anticipated; they also showed that nuclei intermediate between the long-
lived actinides and the predicted island are deformed, and gain additional
stability from shell effects.[41] Experiments on lighter superheavy nuclei,[42] as
well as those closer to the expected island,[38] have shown greater than previously
anticipated stability against spontaneous fission, showing the importance of shell
effects on nuclei.[i]

Alpha decays are registered by the emitted alpha particles, and the decay products
are easy to determine before the actual decay; if such a decay or a series of
consecutive decays produces a known nucleus, the original product of a reaction can
be easily determined.[j] (That all decays within a decay chain were indeed related
to each other is established by the location of these decays, which must be in the
same place.)[24] The known nucleus can be recognized by the specific
characteristics of decay it undergoes such as decay energy (or more specifically,
the kinetic energy of the emitted particle).[k] Spontaneous fission, however,
produces various nuclei as products, so the original nuclide cannot be determined
from its daughters.[l]

The information available to physicists aiming to synthesize a superheavy element

is thus the information collected at the detectors: location, energy, and time of
arrival of a particle to the detector, and those of its decay. The physicists
analyze this data and seek to conclude that it was indeed caused by a new element
and could not have been caused by a different nuclide than the one claimed. Often,
provided data is insufficient for a conclusion that a new element was definitely
created and there is no other explanation for the observed effects; errors in
interpreting data have been made.[m]