Nihonium is a synthetic chemical element named after Japan (Nihon).
Core Principles & Analysis
RIKEN's team led by Kosuke Morita detected its first nihonium atom in July 2004 by fusing zinc-70 with bismuth-209, and needed about nine years of beam time to accumulate just three atoms.
Credited in 2015 as the first element discovered in Asia, it was named nihonium in 2016 from 'Nihon', a Japanese name for Japan.
Its most stable known isotope, nihonium-286, has a half-life of about ten seconds and is produced more easily as a decay product of moscovium than by direct synthesis.