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We're going to go through the main doors into the cyclotron facility.

It's like a kind of giant cavern with a giant box in the middle of the cavern.

Yeah, so we're actually standing directly outside of the main cyclotron vaults.

Separating us from the cyclotron is about 10 feet of concrete right now.

Is that a safety thing?

Yes.

The radiation fields that the cyclotron generates when it is running are quite high.

For the BBC World Service, this is the documentary.

I'm on the hillside above Berkeley, California.

And while it feels like I've entered an end-of-the-world bunker,

I'm not here to witness destruction.

I'm here to understand creation.

My name is Jennifer Pore, and I'm a research scientist working in the heavy element program at Berkeley Left.

My name is Jacqueline Gates. I am the group leader of the heavy element group.

We study super heavy elements. A super heavy element is any element with 104 protons or more.

Back in the 40s, when we were beginning to understand nuclear science, we didn't think that these elements could exist.

Now, these researchers have worked out how to make another one,

how to manufacture an entirely new super-heavy element

that has never before existed on planet Earth.

We have to make these in collisions

where we combine nuclei of two lighter atoms together.

...