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."

Comments

Island of Stability

[Schezar]

The ultimate goal is reaching a theoretical Island of Stability.

This is a hypothesized region farther down on the peiodic table where extremely heavy elements become stable and long-lasting, albeit with interesting properties due to the large number of sub-elements of which they're comprised.

Re:Island of Stability

[crow]

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.