Russians, Americans discover new element

You can chalk off 'Discover the next element on the Periodic Table' off of your to-do list. A team of Russian and American scientists have discovered a new element, number 118, in experiments conducted in the first half of 2005. The announcement, however, is just being made now.

The element was created by shooting calcium ions at californium atoms (number 116 on the chart) in a particle accelerator. Element 118 will decay into element 116. More scientists will study the data. In the past, claims that new elements were discovered were scaled back.

This is the fifth element discovered by cooperation between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in collaboration with researchers from Dubna, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Russia. They also discovered elements 113, 114, 115 and 116.

There is no fancy latinized name for the new element.