Slashdot Mirror
Japan Claims Heaviest-Ever Element
mOoZik writes "According to People's Daily Online, Japanese scientists claim to have created a new element, whose atomic number is 113, by bombarding a Bismuth atom target with 2.5 trillion zinc atoms per second for 80 days. The claim, as that of Russian and American scientists that claimed to have created elements 113 and 115 in February, remains to be officially confirmed."
Interesting. For the non-physicists here, the wikipedia article on the Island of stability is more accessible.
From that article:
The term "particularly stable" is in comparison to the half-lives of slightly lighter or heavier elements; the half-lives of elements in the island of stability are still expected to be measured in fractions of a second, or perhaps measured in days, though some theoretical possibilities include much longer periods.