Super Heavy New Element

[Alex]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Besides, isn't it "cheating" to CREATE a new element? Why should it be in the Periodic Table if it does not exist in the natural universe?

I don't know if it is "cheating" but any new elements we create at this point are essentially irrelevant to practical chemistry. That's not true of all the ones previously created though. Everything from 99 pretty much have half-lives too low to be of practical use.

The search, however, is not necessarily so irrelevant. There are schools of thought (mostly cast by the wayside now but not completely discarded) that there may be "islands of stability" out there, and allow for creation of high weight atoms that are stable enough to have practical implications beyond theoretical physics and chemistry.