Again, I realize that this is a bit of a turn from my usual content, but I found this story interesting.

News:
A team of researchers from Russia?s Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and the United States? Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced today that they have discovered (produced) the controversial element 118.

For those of you who don?t know, there is actually quite a story behind element 118, unofficially known as ?ununoctium?. In 1999, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California claimed to have discovered the element.

Trouble began brewing, however, as other teams of scientists were unable to replicate the data. By June of 2002, it was shown that the lead researcher, Victor Ninov, had falsified data and that the team had not discovered the element.

According to reports, the team bombarded Californium and Calcium together in a particle accelerator to create the element, which remained for less than one one-thousandth of a second.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Element_118 and http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061016/D8KQ0G780.html

Views:
First I?d like to congratulate the scientists on their amazing accomplishment. In terms of real commonsense, I guess I?d have to wonder if it?s really worth it go through all the trouble of producing an element that is gone in less than the blink of an eye.

I understand the discovery behind in and all, but it seems to me that it would be better to focus on elements that are likely to be fairly long-lived. That is, ones with favorable electron configurations which are atomically stable.

More than anything, I suppose, this discovery reaffirms that the United States (in this case working with Russia) is still a world leader in Physics research. It will be very interesting to see if this holds up when CERN opens up it?s LHC in 2007.

Common Sense:
Always check your facts before making claims of new discoveries (apparently the folks at Berkley didn?t in 1999) and don?t make anything too dangerous or unstable (I?d hate to see what potential element 119 does with water).