Ununhexium

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Ununhexium is the temporary name of an unconfirmed synthetic superheavy element in the periodic table that has the temporary symbol Uuh and has the atomic number 116. Some research has referred to it as "eka-polonium".

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History

In 1999, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced the discovery of elements 116 and 118, in a paper published in Physical Review Letters. The following year, they published a retraction after other researchers were unable to duplicate the results. In June 2002, the director of the lab announced that the original claim of the discovery of these two elements had been based on data fabricated by the principal author Victor Ninov.

In January, 2001 the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, published results [1] that described the decay of the isotope ²⁹²Uuh, which was produced in the reaction of ²⁴⁸Cm with ⁴⁸Ca. It has a half-life of about 18 milliseconds (0.018 seconds) and decayed into ²⁸⁸Uuq. On May 11 2001, the institute reported synthesizing a second atom, and that the properties confirmed a region of "enhanced" stability (see Island of stability): confirmation of these results is still pending.

Ununhexium is a temporary IUPAC systematic element name.

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