Row 8 Watch
Two empty seats
Every known element ends at oganesson, 118. The next one would start a new row of the periodic table. On the spiral, the path simply keeps going, and the seats for 119 and 120 are already drawn.
Who's hunting
| Lab | Aiming for | How | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| JINR, Dubna (Russia) | 119 and 120 | Titanium-50 into berkelium-249 for 119; chromium-54 into curium-248 for 120 | Running since May 2026 at the Superheavy Element Factory. First results were expected around September–October 2026. (www1.ru) |
| Berkeley Lab (USA) | 120 | Titanium-50 into californium-249 at the 88-Inch Cyclotron | In 2024 the team made two atoms of livermorium (116) with a titanium-50 beam, proving the method. The element 120 search began in 2025. (Chemistry World, Wikipedia) |
| RIKEN (Japan) | 119 | Vanadium-51 into curium-248 | Running since January 2018. No atoms reported so far. (Wikipedia) |
| IMP Lanzhou (China) | 119 | Chromium-54 into americium-243 | Planned. (Wikipedia) |
Germany's GSI ran titanium-50 into berkelium-249 and californium-249 in 2012 and saw no atoms of 119 or 120 (Wikipedia).
Why it's so hard
Superheavy elements are made one atom at a time by firing a beam of lighter nuclei at a rare radioactive target, for months or years. Almost every collision fails. The few atoms that form last milliseconds or less before they decay, and the decay chain is how scientists prove they were there.
Berkeley's team estimates element 120 will be about 10 to 20 times harder to make than livermorium.
What happens next
A lab that sees a new element publishes its decay chains. An independent working group of chemists and physicists (IUPAC and IUPAP) then reviews the claim, which can take years. Only after that does the discoverer propose a name.
When it happens, this page will update and the seat on the spiral will light up. Watch the spiral fill in over history →