SHIP, the Separator for Heavy Ion Reaction Products, and the making of the heaviest atomic nuclei. Roentgenium - a new chemical element

Ever since the foundation of the GSI, the Darmstadt-based Gesellschaft fuer Schwerionenforschung, in the 1970s, physicists of the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen have been at the frontiers of research work examining the behaviour of nuclear matter under critical stability conditions. The article in this edition of ''Spiegel der Forschung'', the scientific journal of the university, highlights the results of the last twenty years of research activities with the velocity separator named SHIP, Separator for Heavy Ion Reaction Products. With this instrument, developed by members of the university's II. Institute of Physics and built and operated by members of the GSI in Darmstadt, the scientists were able to generate the six heaviest of the currently known chemical elements, with atomic numbers ranging from 107 to 112. The element with the atomic number 111 will be named ''Roentgenium'', in honour of the famous physicist and Nobel prize winner Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen