Спереводом the 114th element in the mendeleyev periodic table has now been found. the element, whose atomic weight is 289 and which is yet to be named, was predicted by theoretical physicists and has been synthesized by a group of researchers under professor yury oganesyan at the flerow laboratory of nuclear reactions in dubna. it had taken the oganesyan group more than six years to prepare the experiment whereby, on november 3, they started bombarding a plutonium 244 target, sent by their us colleagues, with beams of accelerated calcium - 48 ions. the existence of a new chemical element was registered on new year’s eve. the real value of the discovery lies in the fact that element 114 existed for an extraordinarily long period: all of 30 seconds, which is longer than its predecessors by at least a factor of 106, and which is quite enough to prove in practice a theory that was advanced in 1964 – about the existence, in the turbulent ocean of nuclear life, of the so-called “islands of stability” where the life of super-heavy nucleus can be measured not in nanoseconds, but in minutes, and maybe even in years. “we consider this experiment one of the most important events of the past year. at last the efforts of many years by physicists in russia, the united states, and germany, who have been looking for “islands of stability” have been crowned with success,” says mikhail itkis, head of the flerov laboratory of nuclear reactions. “the programme will certainly be continued. after all, we have obtained just one long-living nucleus. we also expect to discover elements that can live for a year and even 100 years.” professor yury oganesyan himself is far more cautious in his appraisals. it is not just out of modesty that he has thus far refused to accept congratulations. oganesyan and his colleagues will have to spend a great deal of time yet to confirm the existence of element 114, repeating the experiment again and again, to achieve the same result – a super-heavy nucleus with atomic number 289. be that as it may, deep down, yury oganesyan hardly has any doubts that the discovery has been made. when the experiment was just getting underway, he said: “if our understating of the atomic nucleus is so correct that by ‘driving’ it into extreme conditions we will gain conclusive proof of its long life, we’ll be happy. if not, i dread to think what’ll happen: we’ll have to revise everything so drastically that nothing will be left of our present theoretical constructs.”
