The Element Known As

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Left to nature, the element temporarily called “ununseptium” for its place on the periodic table of the elements — Latin, roughly, for “117-ness” — would never have materialized. But then along came a team of scientists working at the Dubna cyclotron, north of Moscow. According to a paper recently accepted for publication by the journal Physical Review Letters, they have been able to create six atoms of ununseptium by colliding isotopes of calcium (20 on the periodic table) and berkelium (97), which exists only in minute quantities.

Add the protons, which is what gives elements their atomic number, and you get 117, never mind how hard it is to do the addition in real life.

In a sense, these scientists are continuing the work of the Big Bang and subsequent supernovas — the crucibles in which the naturally occurring elements were formed. The first 92 elements, ending with uranium, are stable enough to build a universe upon. The elements discovered since then have, for the most part, had shorter and shorter lives, often measured in milliseconds.

As scientists push into this new region of the periodic table they are discovering elemental lifetimes that last longer and longer, raising questions about the number of elements — with still to be imagined uses — it may be possible to create and work with someday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/opinion/12mon4.html?th&emc=th