Word: americium
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...have once existed, but they're radioactive, and decay so quickly that there's none left on Earth, or, as far as we know, in space. Or there wasn't, rather, until physicists armed with cyclotrons began making them during World War II creating such exotic substances as Americium (94 protons), Curium (96), Berkelium (97). The more protons (and neutrons, which tend to add up even faster), the harder it is to make a new element-but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying...
...enforcement agencies, assert that the group was trying to construct a crude radiological dirty bomb. The arrests (which followed a yearlong surveillance operation, code-named Operation Spangle) turned up a cache of household smoke detectors, which the British suspect the group wanted to cannibalize for their minute quantities of americium-241, a man-made radioactive chemical. Officials tell TIME it's extremely unlikely that enough americium could be harvested from smoke detectors to create a device potent enough to inflict radiation sickness, let alone kill people. But others argue that spewing even a small amount of radioactive material into...
...Hahn somehow got it into his head in high school to build a nuclear reactor in his mom's potting shed, and damn if he didn't come close. In The Radioactive Boy Scout (Random House; 209 pages), Ken Silverstein describes how Hahn extracted radioactive elements from household objects--americium from smoke detectors, thorium from Coleman lanterns, deadly radium from the glow-in-the-dark paint used on the hands of vintage clocks. For sheer improvisational ingenuity, Hahn makes MacGyver look like Jessica Simpson. When public-health officials finally caught on to what Hahn was up to, the potting shed...
They are probably right. Americium emits almost exclusively alpha particles, the nuclei of helium atoms produced by the isotope's slow decay into lighter elements. The alpha particles are so weak that they remain confined inside the victim's body. While contagion is virtually impossible, this is only slight comfort to the victims. As americium spreads through the body, it may linger in such areas as the liver, spleen and lymph system and eventually settle into the marrow of the bones. According to Pittsburgh Radiologist Niel Wald, a leading radiation specialist, the effect over a year-long period...
...seems to have been hurt by the poisoning. Even 300 times their dose has produced no ill effects in the two other known cases. But unless the radioactive element is removed, they will go right on "ticking" as long as they live-and probably for some time thereafter. Americium has a half-life of 458 years; it takes nearly half a millennium for 50% of the isotope to disappear...