compound nucleus enough for five neutrons to "evaporate."

"The process of identifying what you've made comes down to tracking the time between decays and decay energies," says Ellison. As a check against possible mistakes, the data from the experiment were independently analyzed using separate programs devised by Ellison, Gregorich, and team member Jacklyn Gates of NSD.

In this way, after more than three weeks of running the beam, the researchers observed one chain of decays from the desired neutron-light 114 nucleus. The first two new isotopes, 285114 itself, and copernicium 281 produced by its alpha decay, lived less than a fifth of a second before emitting alpha particles. The third new isotope, darmstadtium 277, lived a mere eight-thousandths of second. Hassium 273 lasted a third of a second. Seaborgium 269new isotopes, reaching in an unbroken chain of decays from element 114 down to rutherfordium, is a major step toward better understanding the theory underlying exploration of the region of enhanced stability that is thought to lie in the vicinity of element 114and possibly beyond.

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