No. It's Livermorium!
in your element Uuh? No. It’s livermorium! Alpha decay into flerovium? It must be Lv, saysKat Day, as she tells us how little we know about element 116. t the end of last year, the International behaviour in polonium, which we’d expect to Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry have very similar chemistry. The most stable A(IUPAC) announced the verification class of polonium compounds are polonides, of the discoveries of four new chemical for example Na2Po (ref. 8), so in theory elements, 113, 115, 117 and 118, thus Na2Lv and its analogues should be attainable, completing period 7 of the periodic table1. though they are yet to be synthesized. Though now named2 (no doubt after having Experiments carried out in 2011 showed 3 213 212m read the Sceptical Chymist blog post ), that the hydrides BiH3 and PoH2 were 9 we shall wait until the public consultation surprisingly thermally stable . LvH2 would period is over before In Your Element visits be expected to be less stable than the much these ephemeral entities. lighter polonium hydride, but its chemical In the meantime, what do we know of investigation might be possible in the gas their close neighbour, element 116? Well, after phase, if a sufficiently stable isotope can a false start4, the element was first legitimately be found. reported in 2000 by a collaborative team Despite the considerable challenges posed following experiments at the Joint Institute for by the short-lived nature of livermorium, EMMA SOFIA KARLSSON, STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN STOCKHOLM, KARLSSON, EMMA SOFIA Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia.
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