Element 112 confirmed but not named

Element 112 has finally been recognised by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) almost a decade after its first discovery. But it will only officially be added to the periodic table when the team credited with discovering the element devise a name for it.

To create super-heavy element 112, the team led by Sigurd Hofmann at the Centre for Heavy Ion Research used a 120m-long particle accelerator to fire a beam of zinc ions at lead atom targets. Nuclei of the two elements fused to form the nucleus of the 112 element.

It doesn't all stop there. In 2006, Professor Hofmann's competitors at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, claimed the discovery of element 118. It was made by bombarding a californium target with a beam of calcium ions.

See BBC News.