Hassium - Natural Occurrence

Natural Occurrence

In the 1960s, it was predicted that long-lived deformed isomers of hassium might occur naturally on Earth in trace quantities. This was theorized in order to explain the extreme radiation damage in some minerals that could not have been caused by any known natural radioisotopes, but could have been caused by superheavy elements. In 1963, Victor Cherdyntsev claimed to have discovered element 108 in natural molybdenite and suggested the name sergenium for it, after a region in Kazakhstan where his molybdenite samples came from. More recently, it was hypothesized that an isomer of 271Hs might have a half-life of around (2.5±0.5)×108 y, which would explain the observation of alpha particles with energies of around 4.4 MeV in some samples of molybdenite and osmiride. This isomer of 271Hs could be produced from the beta decay of 271Bh and 271Sg, which, being homologous to rhenium and molybdenum respectively, should occur in molybdenite along with rhenium and molybdenum if they occured in nature. Since hassium is homologous to osmium, it should also occur along with osmium in osmiride if it occurred in nature. However, the decay chains of these isotopes are very hypothetical and the predicted half-life of this hypothetical hassium isomer is not long enough for any sufficient quantity to remain on Earth. It is possible that more 271Hs may be deposited on the Earth as the Solar System travels through the spiral arms of the Milky Way, which would also explain excesses of plutonium-239 found on the floors of the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Finland, but minerals enriched with 271Hs are predicted to also have to have excesses of uranium-235 and lead-207, and would have different proportions of elements that are formed during spontaneous fission, such as krypton, zirconium, and xenon. Thus, the occurrence of hassium in nature in minerals such as molybdenite and osmiride is theoretically possible, but highly unlikely. In 2004, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research conducted a search for natural hassium. This was done underground to avoid interference and false positives from cosmic rays, but no results have been released, strongly implying that no natural hassium was found. The possible extent of primordial hassium on Earth is uncertain; it might now only exist in traces, or could even have completely decayed by now after having caused the radiation damage long ago.