the periodic table created by Dmitry Mendeleev. Accordingly, the United Nations proclaimed 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements (IYPT 2019). At 150 years old, the table is still growing. In 2016, four new elements were added to it: nihonium, moscovium, tennessine, and oganesson. Their atomic numbers—the number of protons in the nucleus that determines their chemical properties and place in the periodic table—
Dr. Witold (Witek) Nazarewicz
Nuclear chemists have proposed that there exists an “Island of Stability” out in the Atomic Number range near 200.
The proposal was made on theoretical grounds. Atom smashing experiments have generated several elements heavier than plutonium, but they all decay quickly by fission. Only a few very ephemeral elements heavier than Atomic Number 100 have been convincingly identified.
Those same nuclear chemists are constantly on the alert for the appearance of such heavy elements in heavy atom collider tracks, and in the spectra of freshly exploded supernovas. The latter alert was prompted by some thin evidence that the isotope Californium-252 is present in supernovas.
Jerome Zoeller, Ph.D from The University of Texas at Austin (1987)
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