Ununoctium
Experiments conducted at Dubna in Russia at the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions (by workers from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the USA) indicate that element 118 (ununoctium, Uuo) was produced. Not too much though, one atom in the spring of 2002 and two more in 2005.
| Image credit: S. Fletcher/T. Tegge/LLNL | ||
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| Artist's conception of calcium ions traveling down the accelerator at a high velocity toward the rotating californium target. | The new element 118 travels through the accelerator to the detector. | The particle begins to decay and eventually fissions. |
24998Cf + 4820Ca ¾® 294118Uuo + 31n
The experiments created three atoms of element 118 that lasted 0.9 milliseconds before they decayed into element 116 and then element 114 - part of the "transuranic" family of elements.
The results are published in the October 2006 edition of the journal Physical Review C. This discovery brings the total to six new elements for the Livermore-Dubna collaboration (113, 114, 115, 116, 117 and 118).
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