An international team of researchers, led by physicists from Lund University, has confirmed the existence of what is considered a new element with atomic number 115. The experiment was conducted at the GSI research facility in Germany. The results confirm earlier measurements performed by research groups in Russia.

By bombarding a thin film of americium with calcium ions, the research team was able to measure photons in connection with the new element’s alpha decay. Certain energies of the photons agreed with the expected energies for X-ray radiation, which is a ‘fingerprint’ of a given element.

The new super-heavy element has yet to be named.

Sityl wrote:The amount of "it's not a real element if it was only in a lab" comments on huffington post made me have a sad.

CdesignProponentsist wrote:

Sityl wrote:The amount of "it's not a real element if it was only in a lab" comments on huffington post made me have a sad.

That is quite an ignorant statement (Huffington's not yours) since they are most likely produced in supernovae. Can't get more natural than that.

Sityl wrote:

CdesignProponentsist wrote:

Sityl wrote:The amount of "it's not a real element if it was only in a lab" comments on huffington post made me have a sad.

That is quite an ignorant statement (Huffington's not yours) since they are most likely produced in supernovae. Can't get more natural than that.

I did see one reply which stated that, but alas, every other post was about how it's not "really" an element. They probably read plato or something.

Sityl wrote:I think the thought is that it is "invented," and there fore "unnatural," which just boils down to a no true scotsman fallacy.

Wikipedia wrote:All the reported above isotopes of element 115, obtained by nuclear collisions of lighter nuclei, are severely neutron-deficient, because the proportion of neutrons to protons needed for maximum stability increases with atomic number. The most stable isotope will probably be 299Uup, with 184 neutrons, a known "magic" closed-shell number conferring exceptional stability, making it (with one further proton outside the "magic number" of 114 protons) both the chemical and the nuclear homolog of 209Bi; but the technology required to add the required neutrons presently does not exist. This is because no known combination of target and projectile can result in the required neutrons. It has been suggested[by whom?] that such a neutron-rich isotope could be formed by quasifission (fusion followed by fission) of a massive nucleus, multi-nucleon transfer reactions in collisions of actinide nuclei, or by the alpha decay of a massive nucleus (although this would depend on the stability of the parent nuclei towards spontaneous fission).