Rutherfordium

Rutherfordium

The detected substance is a transuranium element with the atomic number 104. Elements like this one only appear artificially. It had been discovered in the Radiation Laboratory (now Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) at the University of California, Berkeley (USA). The discovery was also claimed by the Russian Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna (former Soviet Union) - they named the element kurchatovium (Ku), after Igor Kurchatov. It can be created for instance by nuclear fusion of californium-249 and carbon-12 (generates rutherfordium-261).