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
(New Scientist, 19 June 1999, p 27).
The new elements decayed in a…
