THE celebrated discovery of the heaviest element ever found was just an
illusion. Red-faced scientists who thought they’d found element 118 in 1999 have
now backed down and retracted their claim.
The element—dubbed “ununoctium”—was supposedly discovered at
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. A team led by Ken Gregorich
fired high-energy krypton ions at a lead target. Within the debris, they thought
they could see the telltale disintegration of element 118, containing 118
protons and 175 neutrons, along with its decay product, element 116
(Â鶹´«Ã½, 19 June 1999, p 27).
The new elements decayed in a…
