Largest cluster of francium atoms made in a laboratory

Francium, the most unstable naturally occurring element, was also the last element that was first discovered in nature (1939, Marguerite Perey). With only around 20–30 g of it estimated to exist throughout Earth’s crust, it has never been examined in large amounts and has no practical uses. In December 2002, scientists at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, managed to create francium atoms using a heavy ion nuclear fusion reactor at Stony Brook’s superconducting linear accelerator and trap more than 300,000 together in a magneto-optical trap.

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