Lawrence Livermoore Discovers Element 118 (again)

Lawrence Livermoore National Laboratories is going to have a press conference on Monday to brief the media on a special achievment. Together with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, they have officially re-discovered element 118. Element 118 was reportedly discovered in 1999 but the discovery was retracted after it was discovered that some of the research involved had been falsified. I can only imagine that the original scandal will hardly be talked about in the mainstream media because I'm sure they won't be talking about it at the press conference - and far be it for any journalists to actually do research online before putting together their articles.

Still, this is a pretty big deal. The theoretical heaviest element would be Untriseptium, but that particular element has yet to be discovered. Element 118 is now the heaviest discovered element to date. I don't truly understand the implications of this development, but considering the stability of the periodic table of elements over the years, it's no easy task to just go out and build a new element.

The easiest explanation is to consider an analogy to bowling. The pins are calcium elements, the bowling ball is Californium. They shot the bowling ball at the pins. Now you would expect the pins to simply fall to the wayside, but under very special circumstances, some of the pins actually fuse to the bowling ball, thereby changing it's nuclear structure. The science is all in setting up the bowling lane, and creating repeatable circumstances in which fusion occurs.

Fusion, of course, you may remember as the holdback to infinitely repeatable and renewable energy sources. The phenomina that is being searched for, however, is Cold Fusion, and some advancements have been made in that regard recently as well. You can read the latest at the Library of Papers on Low Energy Nuclear Reactions and Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reactions, although you might just want to skip on over to Cold Fusion for Dummies.

It will be a while before the new element is named, but I'm officially laying out my nomination now for Kallestadium. I'm still upset about the whole Calcium fiasco - it should begin with a K! Element 118 was orignally named "ununoctium", but that name is of course rescinded because of the scandal back in 1999.