Element 118 has been createed in experiments conducted at the Flerov Lavoratory of Nuclear Reactions in Dubna, Russia by a collaboration of researchers from Russia's Joint Institute for Nuclear Reasearch andthe Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The new element is the heaviest ever created, with a relative atomic,  mass of 294. It was made by bombarding a californium target with a beam of calcium ions. Each of two separate experiments shot around 10¹⁹ calcium ions at the target, but only three ion collisions resulted in successful production of element 118. By convention, the substance remains the Baby Doe of elements until its existence is confirmed at other laboratories. For now, the new substance will be principally known as element 118 for the number of protons in its nucleus, more than in any other element occurring naturrally or produced in the lavoratory.

Hydrogen, the heaviest naturrally occuring element, has 92. Element 118 would fit comfortable just below radon in a column of the periodic table containing what are called noble gases for their inert chemical properties.

The team that created the element in six months of smashing lighterr elments together and trying to make them stick. The scientists said that their results also gave hope that they were approaching a long-predicted "island of stability" of even heavier elements, with longer ives and possibly strange new chemical properties.

The experiments were performed when seicntists at eh Russian laboratory used the cyclotron to bash atoms of calcium, with 20 protons, into a target of Californium, with 98 protons, like little clumps of putty that they hjoped would stick together, said Dr. Dawn A. Shaughnessy, another livemore scientist who worked on the experiment.

In extremely rare instance, they did stick. In 10 billion billion bombardments, detectors found that the two sets of protons glommed together to produce element 118. An element's weight is determined by the total number of protons, which have a positive electrical charge, and neutrons, which are neutral, in its nucleus.

By that measure, too, the new element is the heaviest ever created.

Nuclei have shell-like structures, and the most stable atoms contain so-called "magic numbers" of protons and neutrons that produce closed, or complete, shells.

The numbers 2,8,20,28,50 and82 are magic of both protons and neutrons. The highest known magic number for neutrons alone is 126, meaning that common lead, with 82 protons and 126 neutrons, is the heaviest known "doubly magic", or extremely stable, isotope in the periodic table.

But the theorists have predicted that there is another closed shell out beyond all elements discovered so far, including the latest one. "It's rather like Plum Island at the end of Long Island," Dr. Martin Blume, the overall editor of Physical Review, said. "You go there, there's a gap, and then there's Plum Island."

There is general agreement that the next neutron magic number is 184. But that is still out of reach of current experiments.

The next proton magic number is a matter of disagreement...