Recently, an international team of researchers bombarded each nucleus from a large pile of thorium through a mass spectrometer in search of a previously undiscovered superheavy element.

Lo and behold, while the most abundant isotopes found were in fact thorium, they also had a few hits of something with atomic weight of 292 which they believe equates to an atomic number of 122.

Up ’til now, 122 was a theoretical element that scientists suspected should be there but hadn’t been discovered nor created artificially. The temporary name assigned to 122 is “ununbibium,” or “one-two-two-bium.”

The big brains on campus believe ununbibium has a half-life of about 100 million years!

Time to update the periodic table, folks.

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