Element 119 does not yet exist on the periodic table, but laboratories in Japan, Russia, and China are in an active race to create it. If synthesized, it would be the first new element discovered since oganesson (element 118) was confirmed in 2006, and the first element to open an entirely new row of the periodic table. The effort demands smashing specific atomic nuclei together at enormous energies and then detecting what may amount to just a handful of atoms, each surviving for less than a millisecond. So far, no team has succeeded, but the infrastructure and planning underway suggest the discovery could come within the next few years.
Why Element 119 Is the Next Frontier
The periodic table currently ends at element 118, oganesson, which completes the seventh row. Element 119, temporarily called ununennium under international naming conventions, would be the first entry in the eighth row and would sit directly below francium in the alkali metal column. That placement makes it chemically fascinating: in principle, it would be the heaviest alkali metal ever observed, a group of elements known for being highly reactive and soft. Whether it actually behaves like a traditional alkali metal, however, is an open question. At such extreme atomic numbers, the electrons orbiting the nucleus move at speeds approaching a fraction of the speed of light, and these relativistic effects can dramatically alter how the atom’s outer electrons are arranged. Theoretical calculations have been performed to predict properties like ionization energy and electron affinity, but until someone actually produces and measures an atom of element 119, these remain educated guesses.
Who Is Trying to Make It
The most visible effort belongs to RIKEN, Japan’s flagship natural sciences research institute. RIKEN has a strong track record: it previously discovered element 113 (nihonium), the first element ever found by an Asian laboratory. For element 119, RIKEN constructed a superconducting linear accelerator (SRILAC) and a new superconducting ion source specifically designed to boost beam energy and intensity for the synthesis attempt.1PubMed Central. Facility upgrade for superheavy-element research at RIKEN The approach involves firing a beam of vanadium-51 ions at a target made of curium-248. When the two nuclei collide and fuse, the resulting compound nucleus briefly holds 119 protons and 180 neutrons before shedding three or four neutrons and settling into an isotope of element 119.2ACS Central Science. How Japan Took the Lead in the Race to Discover Element 119
RIKEN chose the curium-vanadium combination for pragmatic as much as scientific reasons. Curium-248 is easier to prepare and handle in terms of radiation safety than other possible target materials like americium-243 or berkelium-249, and vanadium-51 is cheaper and more widely available than titanium-50, the other leading beam candidate.3ACS Central Science. How Japan Took the Lead in the Race to Discover Element 119 – Section: Picking a winner Meanwhile, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, and the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Lanzhou, China, are each planning to try multiple beam-target combinations, hedging their bets across different reaction pathways.
This is not the first time anyone has tried. In 2012, GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Germany ran a four-month experiment using berkelium-249 as a target and titanium-50 as a beam. They did not produce a single atom of element 119.4ACS Central Science. How Japan Took the Lead in the Race to Discover Element 119 The failure was not surprising given the minuscule odds involved, but it underscored just how difficult the task is.
The Target Material Problem
One of the least appreciated bottlenecks in superheavy element research is the scarcity of target materials. Creating element 119 through hot fusion requires actinide targets, heavy radioactive elements like curium, berkelium, and californium that serve as the stationary half of the collision. These materials are available in extremely limited quantities and require specialized production and processing facilities found in only a few research centers worldwide.5Nuclear Physics A. Actinide targets for the synthesis of super-heavy elements The production itself is arduous: actinide target isotopes can only be made by intense neutron irradiation inside very high flux nuclear reactors, followed by chemical processing and purification in specialized shielded facilities called hot cells.6The European Physical Journal A. Actinide targets for the synthesis of superheavy nuclei
The practical upshot is that you cannot simply order these materials. A laboratory planning a synthesis campaign has to coordinate years in advance with the handful of nuclear reactors capable of producing the isotopes, and then further process them into physical targets thin and uniform enough to survive bombardment by an ion beam. If the target degrades during the experiment, which can take months or even years of continuous running, it has to be replaced, and the supply chain for replacements is anything but fast. This logistical challenge is a genuine limiting factor, not just a secondary inconvenience. It determines which reactions labs can realistically attempt and helps explain why RIKEN opted for curium-248 over berkelium-249: curium is simply more accessible.
Why the Odds Are So Small
Even with the right beam and target, the probability of actually fusing two nuclei into element 119 is extraordinarily low. In nuclear physics, this probability is described by a quantity called the production cross section, and for superheavy elements it has been dropping with each successive element discovered. For the heaviest elements made so far, the cross section is measured in fractions of a picobarn, a unit so small that it corresponds to roughly one successful fusion event for every quintillion collisions. The cross section for element 119 is expected to be even smaller.
The reason is electromagnetic repulsion. Both the beam nucleus and the target nucleus carry positive charges, and the more protons each has, the harder it is to force them close enough for the nuclear strong force to take over and bind them together. When they do fuse, the resulting compound nucleus is in an incredibly excited state, vibrating with excess energy, and it almost always tears itself apart through fission before it can cool down by shedding neutrons. The handful of nuclei that survive this cooling process are the ones physicists hope to detect. In a typical superheavy element experiment, the beam runs for months, delivering trillions of collisions per second, all to produce a few atoms, sometimes just one.
What Happens If an Atom Is Created
Detecting a single atom of element 119 requires a sophisticated chain of instruments. The standard approach for establishing new elements today relies on recoil separators combined with decay-chain analysis.7Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science. On the Production of Superheavy Elements When a successful fusion happens, the newly formed nucleus recoils away from the target at high speed. An electromagnetic separator filters out the vast majority of unwanted particles and steers the recoiling superheavy atom into a detector array. The atom then implants itself into the detector surface, where it sits and decays.
Theoretical calculations predict that alpha decay, where the nucleus ejects a cluster of two protons and two neutrons, will be the dominant way element 119 breaks down. The alpha-decay half-lives for the expected isotopes of element 119 are estimated to be on the order of a fraction of a millisecond, roughly comparable to that of oganesson-294.8Physics Letters B. Superheavy nuclei with Z = 119, 120: α-decay or spontaneous fission? Spontaneous fission, the other major decay pathway for superheavy nuclei, is predicted to have half-lives many orders of magnitude longer than alpha decay for element 119 isotopes, making it a negligible competitor. Alpha decay wins by a wide margin.9Physics Letters B. Superheavy nuclei with Z = 119, 120: α-decay or spontaneous fission?
This matters for detection because alpha decay produces a characteristic signature: a chain of decays, each releasing an alpha particle with a specific energy, stepping down through a sequence of lighter elements. If the detector records a series of alpha decays whose energies and timing match theoretical predictions and whose final product is a known, previously studied nucleus, that chain serves as a fingerprint identifying the original atom. Calculations have already been performed to map out the expected alpha-decay chains of element 119 isotopes, including how they connect to known daughter nuclei like isotopes of tennessine and moscovium.10Nuclear Physics A. Estimates of production and structure of nuclei with Z = 119 Having these theoretical roadmaps in advance is critical because the experimental team needs to know what pattern to look for in the data.
The Island of Stability
Element 119 sits at the doorstep of one of nuclear physics’ most tantalizing predictions. Since the 1960s, theorists have predicted that certain combinations of proton and neutron numbers create especially stable nuclear configurations, analogous to the way filled electron shells make noble gases chemically inert. These “magic numbers” for protons and neutrons are expected to produce nuclei with unusually long half-lives compared to their neighbors, forming a region on the nuclear chart sometimes called the island of stability.
Models predict that large shell gaps appear for spherical nuclear shapes around proton numbers 114, 120, or 126 and neutron number 184.11IOP Publishing. The importance of closed shell structures in the synthesis of super heavy elements – Section: Abstract Element 119, with its 119 protons, is close to the predicted proton shell closure at 120. That proximity is part of what makes its synthesis so scientifically valuable: studying element 119 and its decay products would provide direct experimental data on whether these shell effects genuinely stabilize nuclei in this region, or whether the theoretical models have the magic numbers wrong. If the island of stability is real and centered near proton number 120, then element 119 isotopes might live longer than naive extrapolations from lighter superheavy elements would suggest. Or they might not, and that would be equally informative.
Existing data from elements 107 through 118 already show signatures of enhanced stability near certain proton and neutron numbers, consistent with the reinforcement of shell gaps at deformed nuclear shapes.12IOP Publishing. The importance of closed shell structures in the synthesis of super heavy elements – Section: Abstract But the true center of the island, the region of maximum stability for spherical superheavy nuclei, has not been reached experimentally. Element 119 would be the closest anyone has come, and its properties would help physicists triangulate where that center actually lies.
How Long the Search Could Take
There is no guarantee that element 119 will be found on any particular timeline. RIKEN began its dedicated search campaign after completing the SRILAC upgrade, and the experiment is designed to run continuously for extended periods. But “continuously” in this context means keeping an ion beam operating around the clock for months or years, which introduces its own set of engineering headaches: beam stability, target degradation, detector maintenance, and the sheer cost of running a major accelerator facility nonstop.
The GSI attempt in 2012, which ran for four months without success, offers a useful reference point.13ACS Central Science. How Japan Took the Lead in the Race to Discover Element 119 Four months may sound like a long experiment, but given the expected cross sections, it may not have been nearly long enough. RIKEN’s upgraded accelerator delivers a more intense beam than GSI had available, which improves the odds per unit time. Still, even optimistic estimates suggest that producing a single atom could require months to years of beam time. And one atom is not enough for a discovery claim. To be recognized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the result typically needs to be reproducible, ideally by an independent laboratory. That means the gap between the first possible detection and official recognition of element 119 could stretch further still.
The involvement of multiple competing laboratories actually helps here. If RIKEN produces a candidate event using vanadium-51 on curium-248, and JINR or the Chinese team later confirms it using a different beam-target combination, the cross-validation strengthens the case enormously. The fact that these groups are planning different reaction pathways is not just competitive hedging; it is good experimental strategy.
What Chemistry Could Look Like at Element 119
If element 119 is ever produced in quantities sufficient for chemical study, even a few atoms at a time, it would offer a test of how well the periodic table’s organizational logic holds up at the extremes. Sitting below francium in group 1, element 119 should in principle be an alkali metal: a soft, highly reactive element eager to give up its single outermost electron. Francium itself is so radioactive and short-lived that its chemistry has barely been studied, so element 119 would push even further into uncharted territory.
Relativistic effects complicate the prediction. At high atomic numbers, the innermost electrons orbit so fast that their increased relativistic mass causes them to contract closer to the nucleus. This contraction cascades outward through the electron shell structure, altering the energies and spatial distributions of the outer electrons in ways that can make an element behave differently from what its column in the periodic table would suggest. For element 119, some calculations predict that the outermost electron’s binding energy, and therefore the element’s ionization energy, may be higher than a simple extrapolation from lighter alkali metals would imply. If the ionization energy is high enough, element 119 might be less reactive than expected, potentially behaving more like a heavier analog of potassium than the ultra-reactive element its position suggests.
Single-atom chemistry techniques have advanced remarkably in recent decades. Researchers studying elements like flerovium (114) and oganesson (118) have managed to characterize chemical behavior from interactions involving individual atoms carried through gas-phase chromatography columns. Similar techniques could in principle be applied to element 119, but only if the atoms survive long enough. With predicted half-lives under a millisecond, the window for any chemical measurement is extremely tight. Whether the first atoms of element 119 will yield any chemical data at all, or only nuclear physics data from their decay chains, depends on factors that will not be clear until the atoms are actually produced.
The Naming Game
Whoever first synthesizes element 119 and has the discovery validated by IUPAC earns the right to propose a name. The politics of element naming have a colorful history: disputes over elements 104 through 109 between American, Soviet, and German teams dragged on for decades during the Cold War. More recently, the process has been smoother. Japan named element 113 nihonium after the Japanese word for Japan; Russian-American collaborations named elements 114 through 118 after laboratories, scientists, and places tied to the discovery teams.
For element 119, the naming stakes carry an extra layer of prestige. It would be the first element in a new period, a milestone that comes along rarely. If RIKEN succeeds first, there has been speculation in the scientific community about a name honoring Japanese culture or science. If the Russian or Chinese teams prevail, their naming traditions would apply. Until someone has atoms to show for the effort, ununennium, the systematic placeholder derived from Latin and Greek numerals, remains the official designation. The element’s symbol, Uue, sits waiting in the periodic table’s eighth row, a blank space that could be filled by any laboratory with enough perseverance, enough curium, and enough luck.