Island of stability hypothesis
Hipótesis de la isla de estabilidad
- Date
- c. 1966 · confidence medium
- Place
- Berkeley, California, United States
- Credited to
- William Myers and Wladyslaw Świątecki, popularized by Glenn Seaborg
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Building on the nuclear shell model, Myers and Świątecki coined the term "island of stability" to predict that certain superheavy elements, with closed-shell nuclei (magic numbers), would have far longer half-lives than their neighbors on the chart of nuclides; Glenn Seaborg adopted and popularized the idea.
Wikidata attributes the item to Glenn Seaborg, but according to Wikipedia the term was coined by Myers and Świątecki in the late 1960s; Seaborg, already a discoverer of several superheavy elements, adopted it and gave it public visibility. Heiner Meldner independently developed models predicting the proton magic number 114.
What it led to
- Experimental search for superheavy elements (flerovium, oganesson)
- Synthesis programs targeting nuclides with predicted magic numbers (Z=114, N=184)
Built on
- Nuclear shell model (Goeppert Mayer and Jensen, 1949)