I haven’t had time to look at it closely, but a paper showed up on the physics arXiv claiming possible discovery of element 122. They were analyzing thorium-containing solutions in an inductively-coupled plasma sector field mass spec (ICP-SFMS) and saw a peak they could not explain at mass 292. They argue this should be from an element with atomic number 122. They cite an abundance relative to thorium of about 1E-12. My early, somewhat uninformed, guess is that a contaminant is responsible, but it should make for an interesting read.

PDF Article Link

The discovery of a new isotope of Bohrium, by Nelson et al., was published yesterday in PRL. In total, 8 events of ²⁶⁰Bh were reported. Unfortunately, the new isotope is not long-lived enough to be of practical chemical interest. A summary of the decay properties is summarized in the Nuclear Trading Card format shown below.

The yellow color signifies the observation that it decays by alpha emission 100% of the time. Fortunately the nuclide decays into ²⁵⁶Db, which is long-lived enough for chemistry, and the results taken with this paper and others updates the known decay properties of Dubnium-256. The updated trading card is below.

In this case the red signifies an ~30% electron capture branch. We hope you enjoy the announcement of a new member to the Bohrium family, and have fun with your new nuclear trading card.

Note 1: Link to article: Lightest Isotope of Bh Produced via the ²⁰⁹Bi(⁵²Cr, n)²⁶⁰Bh Reaction

Mitch