ELEMENT 111 HAS BEEN DISCOVERED at the same German lab, the Gesellschaft fur Schwerionenforschung (or GSI for short) in Darmstadt, where a few weeks ago the discovery of Element 110 was announced. Element 111 has an atomic weight of 272 and was created by shooting a nickel beam at a bismuth target. Only a few of the new atoms were detected, and they quickly decayed after the original collision. One of the daughter particles, an atom of Element 109 with an atomic weight of 268, and one of the further decay products, an atom of Element 107 with an atomic weight of 264, were themselves isotopes that had never been observed before. (New York Times, 22 December 1994.) |