Not only is ununoctium expected to be a gas, but it should also be a nonmetal whendiscovered. It is located at the bottom of group 18 (VIIIA) in the periodic table and couldbe expected to have some of the characteristics of it neighbors above it in this group. Whenfirst and erroneously reported as being discovered, it was said to have 118 protons and 175neutrons in its nucleus for an atomic mass number (amu) of ～293, which would make it theheaviest of the yet-to-be discovered elements.
Ununoctium (118) follows the temporary naming system of IUPAC for
elements that have not yet received proper names.
Element 118 has an interesting and fascinating history. In June 1999 the LawrenceBerkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) announced that its team working with the 88-inchcyclotron and related detection equipment had produced a few atoms of the heavy elementZ-118. The team claimed it contained 118 protons and 175 neutrons in its nucleus for a totalof 293 atomic mass units (amu) plus one neutron. One of its several decay products was elementZ-116. Later LBNL’s director announced that an internal investigation had resulted inthe discipline for scientific misconduct of a member of the team working on element 118.Both internal and external investigating committees’ examinations found that Victor Ninov,a member of the experimental team and major author of the first publication related to thediscovery of element 118, “cooked” the data of the experiment. Nuclear research labs in Japan,German, and France could not replicate the experiment in order to confirm the artificialproduction of element 118. Even other scientists at Berkeley could not verify the results ofNinov’s data. Ninov had developed his own computer program to track three decay sequencesof the few atoms of element 118 through element 116 to the end of the chains as element106. Other Berkeley scientists and the investigating committees could not locate his originaldata that claimed several decay chains for element 118.
