Oganesson

periodic table · super heavy · synthetic element · nuclear science

The heaviest element. Oganesson is element 118, making it the heaviest element on the periodic table. It's so massive that atoms can barely hold itself together.

Made by scientists. Scientists created oganesson in 2002 at a research lab in Dubna, Russia by smashing lighter atoms together. You can't find it in nature because it doesn't exist there naturally.

American and Russian teamwork. A team of scientists from both Russia and America worked together to discover oganesson, showing how science brings people from different countries together.

Named after a hero. In 2016, scientists officially named it after Yuri Oganessian, a nuclear physicist who discovered many of the heaviest elements and spent his whole life studying them.

Vanishes instantly. Oganesson is so unstable that it breaks apart in just fractions of a second, so scientists can only study it for a tiny moment before it disappears.