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Article: Smash Element.(Russian scientists' create new element in atom smasher)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Science World
- Article date:
- October 18, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Scholastic, Inc. 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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It's not often that tiny atoms cause a huge smash. But last January, Russian scientists made history: They created the newest element, or smallest unit of matter, in a lab atom smasher. Element 114 is the latest to join the periodic table, the chart of all existing elements. The new element has no name yet, doesn't exist in nature, and lasted exactly 30 seconds before it disintegrated.
So why bother to make it? "It's like a new adventure," says Ken Moody, a chemist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. "We don't know what we're going to get!"
Chemists from Russia's Joint Institute of Nuclear Research (JINR) joined two existing ...