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Article: Blink and you'll miss it.(announcement of a new element ununoctium)
- Article from:
- Chemistry and Industry
- Article date:
- December 18, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Society of Chemical Industry. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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IN OCTOBER, A NEW ELEMENT (ununoctium) was announced to great acclaim, newsworthy on account of it being the heaviest atom ever created (atomic mass 294). But one blink and you could have missed it. It existed only in the laboratory for less than a thousandth of a second.
A previous attempt in 2002 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, to brew up element 118 produced one atom. It disintegrated almost immediately, emitting a series of alpha particles producing known elements 116 (ununhexium), 114 (ununquadium), and 112 (ununbium). And an even earlier attempt by the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, ...