Word: elementally
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...once you get to plutonium, with 94 protons, you've run out of naturally occurring elements. They may 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...
...first time scientists have announced the manufacture of element 118; in 1999, physicists at the rival Lawrence Berkeley Lab said they'd done it. But that claim was retracted amid allegations of fraud by one of the scientists involved...
...Unfortunately, the atoms lived less than a millisecond before decaying, first into element 116, then 114, then 112 and finally fragmenting completely. It wasn't unexpected, but atomic physicists believe, for theoretical reasons, that atoms with 120 or 126 protons might be a lot more stable. Of course, they were saying that about element 114 a few years ago, and it didn't pan out. But if they get to a point where one of these super-heavy elements lasts for hours, not milliseconds (it will depend in part on getting the right number of neutrons as well), that would...
...Until it's confirmed, element 118 remains nameless, although if you Latinize the numerals, it sounds sort of like a name. So for the foreseeable future, it will be known as "Ununoctium," at least to its friends...
...Wang ’09, Barry A. Shafrin ’09, and Zach B. Sniderman ’09, the performance featured works by the playwrights David Ives, Tom Stoppard, Anton Chekhov, and Alan Bennett. Each play was presented in a straightforward manner, without any nonsensical or superfluous elements added to a production for the sake of being “original.” The evening began with the one play that could have benefited from a bit of creative tinkering. Ives’ short work, “Words, Words, Words,” is a humorous...