Roentgenium
⚛️ In Your World
Roentgenium 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, roentgenium-282, has a half-life of about 2.1 minutes. 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 behavior and limits of atomic nuclei.
📖 The Discovery Story
Roentgenium was first synthesized on December 8, 1994, by an international team led by Sigurd Hofmann at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany. They achieved this by bombarding a target of bismuth-209 with accelerated nickel-64 ions, producing a few atoms of roentgenium-272. The element was officially named in 2004 in honor of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, the German physicist who discovered X-rays in 1895.
📊 Properties at a Glance
| Phase at STP | Solid (presumed) |
| Melting Point | Unknown |
| Boiling Point | Unknown |
| Electron Configuration | [Rn] 5f¹⁴6d⁹7s² (predicted) |
| Abundance in Earth's Crust | Essentially zero |
⚠️ Safety & Handling
Roentgenium is intensely radioactive and extremely hazardous. It has only ever been produced on an atom-by-atom basis. All work with roentgenium is conducted in specialized particle accelerator facilities with remote handling to protect researchers from its lethal radiation.