Element 110 Named

Darmstadtium, Ds in shorthand, is how element 110 will now be known, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) agreed in August. The name recognizes Darmstadt, Germany, where, in 1994, the element was first created by a team led by physicist Sigurd Hofmann at the Laboratory for Heavy Ion Research (GSI; see Physics Today, January 1995, page 19 )

The heaviest element found in nature is uranium, which has 92 protons. Intense competition to artificially create heavier elements—chiefly by bombarding heavy nuclei with lighter nuclei—is ongoing at the GSI; at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia; at the RIKEN accelerator laboratory near Tokyo; and by a team of scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley. Six isotopes of darmstadtium have been created to date, with half-lives ranging from 180 microseconds for Ds-269 (whose nucleus consists of 110 protons and 159 neutrons) to 66 seconds for Ds-281 (110 protons and 171 neutrons).

Element 111 was also created at the GSI in 1994. It has been officially recognized by IUPAC, but not yet named. And, says Hofmann, elements 112–118 have been glimpsed in either Darmstadt or Dubna, but more data are needed before their creation can be confidently claimed.