Oct 17, 2006
Elemental discoveries
Researchers at the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in Dubna, Russia, Russia’s Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, have announced new indirect evidence of element 118 in the journal Phys Rev C.
Previously, the LBNL retracted its 1999 claims of having found element 118 because of reproducability issues. (They couldn’t make it again, in other words). It turned out that one of the team had been fabricating lab-book entries.
However, experiments conducted at the JINR U400 cyclotron between February and June 2005, produced atomic decay chains that establish the existence of element 118. In these decay chains, previously observed element 116 is produced via the alpha decay of element 118. The details will be published in the October 2006 edition of the journal, Physical Review C and we’ll have a more complete report later.
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Mitch said,
October 18, 2006 at 12:28 am
The paper is already out early, the link can be found from my “blog” entry on it. http://blog.chemicalforums.com/
Mitch
M Pintero said,
January 17, 2007 at 2:49 am
My high school science teacher always said that how many elements were on the periodic table depends on what country you are in at that time. I have a P-Chem prof who says that indirect evidence doesn’t cut it…..would you guys say indirect is sufficient to publish?
David Bradley said,
January 17, 2007 at 2:03 pm
It depends on what level of robustness you can give to the “indirect” evidence. I think the international differences between elemental discovery claims have changed somewhat in recent years with old rivalries being gradually erased by a new collaborative approach.