Rutherfordium
⚛️ In Your World
Rutherfordium is a synthetic, superheavy element that is so unstable it has no applications outside of fundamental scientific research. It does not exist in nature and has only ever been created in a laboratory, one atom at a time. Its only purpose is to help scientists understand the properties of matter at the extreme upper limits of the periodic table.
📖 The Discovery Story
The discovery of rutherfordium was the subject of a major Cold War-era controversy. A team at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, first claimed to have synthesized it in 1964. In 1969, a team at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, USA, also synthesized it and disputed the Soviet claim. After decades of argument (known as the Transfermium Wars), the IUPAC gave credit to both teams but assigned the name "rutherfordium," proposed by the American team, in honor of New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics.
📊 Properties at a Glance
| Phase at STP | Solid (presumed) |
| Melting Point | 2100 °C / 3812 °F (predicted) |
| Boiling Point | 5500 °C / 9932 °F (predicted) |
| Electron Configuration | [Rn] 5f¹⁴6d²7s² |
| Abundance in Earth's Crust | Essentially zero |
⚠️ Safety & Handling
Rutherfordium is intensely radioactive and extremely hazardous. Its most stable known isotope has a half-life of only about 1.3 hours. It has only ever been produced in atom-sized quantities and can only be studied in specialized particle accelerator facilities.