Podcast: Element 117 and the Island of Stability

An international collaboration of scientists has created element 117 in a laboratory at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany. Element 117--temporarily referred to as ununseptium--was first created in 2010. The new work confirms that those earlier results are repeatable using a different instrument.Element 117 is the second heaviest element ever created, landing just behind 118. It offers nuclear physicists an extreme example of how atomic nuclei behave, and thus...