 Discovery Information |
| Who:
G.T.Seaborg
, R.A.James,
A. Ghiorso
|
| When: 1944 |
| Where: United States |
|
| Name Origin |
| In honor of Pierre and Marie Curie. |
|
| Sources |
| Made by bombarding plutonium with helium
ions
. So radioactive it glows in the dark. |
|
| Uses |
| As curium is only available in extremely limited quanities, it has few uses, however, it was used on a Mars mission as an alpha particle source for the Alpha Proton X-Ray Spectrometer. |
|
| Notes |
| The
isotope
curium-248 has been synthesized only in milligram quantities, but curium-242 and curium-244 are made in multigram amounts, which allows for the determination of some of the element's properties. |
| Curium bio-accumulates in bone tissue where its radiation destroys bone marrow and thus stops red blood cell creation. |
