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Object

Oganesson

A golden spherical object with numerous protruding rods and spheres, resembling a molecular structure, stands against a dark background.

Element 118, the heaviest yet synthesised, first produced in 2002 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna by bombarding californium with calcium-48 ions. Only a handful of atoms have ever existed; each lives less than a millisecond before fissioning. Named for the Russian physicist Yuri Oganessian, it sits at the bottom of the noble-gas column but may not, on closer inspection, behave like one.

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