Meitnerium
⚛️ In Your World
Meitnerium is a synthetic, superheavy element that has only ever been created a few atoms at a time in particle accelerators. Its most stable known isotope has a half-life of only a few seconds. Due to its extreme instability and the fact that only a handful of atoms have ever been made, it has no applications outside of fundamental scientific research. Its only purpose is to help scientists understand the limits of atomic nuclei.
📖 The Discovery Story
Meitnerium was first synthesized in 1982 by a German research team led by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried Münzenberg at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) in Darmstadt. They created a single atom of meitnerium-266 by bombarding a target of bismuth-209 with accelerated iron-58 nuclei. The element was named "meitnerium" in 1997 to honor the Austrian-Swedish physicist Lise Meitner, a co-discoverer of nuclear fission who was famously overlooked by the Nobel Prize committee.
📊 Properties at a Glance
| Phase at STP | Solid (presumed) |
| Melting Point | Unknown |
| Boiling Point | Unknown |
| Electron Configuration | [Rn] 5f¹⁴6d⁷7s² (predicted) |
| Abundance in Earth's Crust | Essentially zero |
⚠️ Safety & Handling
Meitnerium is intensely radioactive and extremely hazardous. It has only ever been produced on an atom-by-atom basis. All work with meitnerium is conducted in specialized particle accelerator facilities with remote handling to protect researchers from its lethal radiation.