Flerovium is a superheavy synthetic chemical element named after the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions.
Core Principles & Analysis
Flerovium was first synthesized in late 1998 at Dubna by fusing calcium-48 with plutonium-244, in the Russian-American collaboration that opened the 'hot fusion' era of superheavy elements.
It is named for the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions and its founder Georgy Flyorov, who in 1942 alerted Stalin that Western silence on fission implied a secret bomb project.
With 114 protons, a predicted magic number, flerovium anchors island-of-stability research; flerovium-289 lives about two seconds, and experiments suggest the element is unusually volatile for a metal.