

There are no stable or natural isotopes of roentgenium. Roentgenium is highly radioactive and require special handling precautions.

It is used for various research purposes. Journal reference: Pure and Applied Chemistry, DOI: 10.Roentgenium is an artificial and highly radioactive element that was synthesized in 1994. “You can’t say where it is until you have tried.”

There is a theoretical limit above which it is impossible for an atom to exist, though: “The aim is to find the end of the periodic table” says Hofmann. Meanwhile, teams the world over are striving to create ever heavier elements. But a team at Dubna in Russia made a more stable, neutron-rich isotope, allowing them to establish its boiling point at around 80 ☌, according to Hofmann. The element only popped into existence for an instant at Darmstadt. Making element 112 was 10 times harder to make than 110, says Hofmann. To produce atoms of element 112, the scientists fired zinc ions onto a lead target. Making such elements is no easy task however, as the positively charged nuclei of atoms must be fused together. It has also named two after places: element 110, darmstadtium, and hassium at atomic number 108, after the German state of Hesse. The team has named other elements after scientists, such as meitnerium (atomic number 109, after Lise Meitner) and roentgenium (atomic number 111, after Wilhelm Roentgen), which was officially recognised by IUPAC and named in 2004. Hofmann’s team has been churning out elements since 1981, when it first made element 107, named bohrium, after the physicist Niels Bohr. They repeated this feat in 2000, making a second atom. In 1996, a team at the GSI Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany, made the first atom of 112 by fusing atoms of zinc and lead. Currently, the heaviest named and recognised element is roentgeniuim at position 111, which was officially named in 2004.įor years, the space next to it has been unceremoniously occupied by the letters Uub, which stand for ununbium, a temporary placeholder name that comes from the Latin words for 1-1-2. Since 1941 physicists have been synthesising elements heavier than uranium – atomic number 92 – by fusing atoms together. The heaviest known naturally occurring element is plutonium, with an atomic number of 94: the number of protons in its nucleus. The new element will be the heaviest yet – and the first new element for five years. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has decided that the as-yet-unnamed element finally meets the conditions for official recognition, 13 years after it was first made. A new “superheavy” element is being added to the periodic table.
