Mass asymmetry in fission, fusion and mass transfer due to the fragmentation in valleys

It is shown that the mass-asymmetry valleys, which appear in the fragmentation potential due to the shell effects of the fragments, are responsible (i) for the mass-asymmetry of the fission fragments, (ii) for the maximum of the fusion cross sections for the same compound system obtained by the different projectile-target combinations and (iii) for the asymmetry in the mass transfer in heavy-ion collisions. Due to the existence of different mass-asymmetry valleys for the same compound system, a new, highly asymmetric fission in which one of the fragments is close to the double magic nucleus 208 Pb is predicted for transfermium nuclei including the superheavy nuclei.