40 Fun Facts About Meitnerium

Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1938, meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner was handed which heirloom by Otto Hahn for emergencies?

A diamond ring inherited from Otto Hahn's mother went with her in case of emergency. Apart from that she crossed the border with just 10 marks in her purse.

How many atoms of meitnerium did its German discoverers detect in the experiment that first created the element?

Just one atom appeared after a week of bombardment, yet that lone sighting was enough to claim a new element. By 1997 the same laboratory had added only 14 more.

Lise Meitner, the physicist honoured by meitnerium, was nominated 49 times for which honour without ever winning it?

The Nobel Prize for the discovery she helped explain went to Otto Hahn alone in 1944. Her 49 nominations were split between chemistry, with 19, and physics, with 30.

Meitnerium is the only element named solely after a real woman, because which element honours a married couple instead?

Curium honours Marie Curie together with her husband, so she shares the credit. That leaves Lise Meitner as the only real woman with an element to herself.

Even the longest-lived confirmed form of meitnerium, known as meitnerium-278, lasts roughly how long before it decays?

A few seconds is the best it manages before half of any sample has vanished. The very first atom of the element, a lighter form, lasted about five milliseconds.

Lise Meitner, namesake of meitnerium, helped explain how atoms split but refused a wartime invitation to do what?

Work on the atomic bomb was something she flatly refused, turning down a place at Los Alamos. She later said the attack on Hiroshima had come as a surprise to her.

Meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner worked out how uranium atoms split on a woodland walk over which holiday?

Christmas 1938 found her as a refugee guest in the small town of Kungälv, where the physicist Otto Frisch joined her. He wore skis on the walk; she kept pace on foot.

Meitnerium was first made by bombarding a target of which heavy metal, also found in pink stomach remedies?

Bismuth is the metal in Pepto-Bismol, and here it served as the target. Each of its atoms holds 83 protons, and the 26 carried by an incoming projectile brought the total to 109.

The headstone of Lise Meitner, namesake of meitnerium, describes her as a physicist who never lost what?

Her humanity is what the inscription honours, in words composed by the physicist Otto Frisch. She lies in the churchyard at Bramley, an English village, near her younger brother.

Which two-letter symbol does meitnerium, element 109, carry in its box on the periodic table?

Mt became the official symbol in 1997, when the name was finally approved. Until then, periodic tables printed the three-letter placeholder Une in the same box.

Meitnerium honours Lise Meitner, who helped discover which process now harnessed in reactors that power whole cities?

Nuclear fission, the splitting of a heavy atom into two lighter ones, was first explained by her in early 1939. She and Otto Frisch showed that each split frees enormous energy.

Meitnerium was first created at a heavy-ion laboratory near which German city in the Frankfurt region?

Darmstadt is home to the GSI laboratory, where six new elements were first made between 1981 and 1996. One of the six now carries the city's own name.

To make meitnerium, scientists fired nuclei of which everyday metal at a heavy target?

Iron supplied the projectiles, in the scarce form iron-58, which makes up only about 0.3 percent of the natural metal. Each nucleus carried 26 protons to add to the target's 83.

Meitnerium has never been found naturally on Earth, so where has every known atom of the element been produced?

In an accelerator is the only place it has ever been made: heavy nuclei are smashed together until two fuse. Its heavier forms appear only as fragments when even heavier man-made elements decay.

Which metal, famous for a deep blue pigment, heads the periodic-table column that ends with meitnerium?

Cobalt heads group 9, and its compounds have tinted glass and ceramics blue for centuries. Meitnerium is expected to behave like its lighter relatives, though nobody has tested it.

Meitnerium sits directly below which rare metal, whose traces in ancient clay reveal a dinosaur-killing asteroid?

Iridium is its nearest relative, so the unmade element was once nicknamed eka-iridium, meaning one place beyond it. The two are predicted to share a crystal structure.

Which famous equation let Lise Meitner, namesake of meitnerium, calculate the energy freed when a uranium atom splits?

E = mc² turned a tiny loss of mass, about a fifth of a proton, into some 200 million electron volts for every atom split. She did the sums on scraps of paper in the woods.

Lise Meitner, the physicist honoured by meitnerium, served the Austrian army in World War I in which role?

An X-ray nurse and technician is what she became in 1915, after a hospital course in anatomy. Her unit was sent to the Eastern front in Poland, and she later served on the Italian front.

After escaping Nazi Germany, meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner settled in which country, becoming a citizen in 1949?

Sweden gave her a research post in Stockholm in 1938 and citizenship in 1949. Its parliament passed a special act so that she could keep her Austrian nationality too.

Before meitnerium was named, chemists called it unnilennium, a placeholder whose Latin and Greek roots mean what?

One-zero-nine is all it says: un, nil and enn are the roots for the digits 1, 0 and 9. The scheme gave every unnamed element a stopgap name built from its number.

Meitnerium is placed in which broad family of elements, alongside gold, silver, copper and platinum?

Transition metals fill the wide middle block of the table, and meitnerium is the seventh member of their fourth and heaviest row. No experiment has yet confirmed it behaves like one.

The German laboratory that made meitnerium also created which element, number 108, named after its home state?

Hassium takes its name from Hassia, the Latin for the state of Hesse. A rival plan would have called element 108 hahnium instead, after Lise Meitner's research partner Otto Hahn.

Otto Frisch, who helped Lise Meitner, namesake of meitnerium, explain the splitting atom, was related to her how?

Her nephew was the son of her sister Auguste, a concert pianist. He went on to join the wartime weapons project at Los Alamos.

Meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner helped explain atom splitting, a process given a name borrowed from which science?

Biology supplied the word: Otto Frisch borrowed the term for a living cell dividing in two and applied it to the atom. The name first appeared in print in February 1939.

Which quantum pioneer, once opposed to women at universities, made meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner his assistant?

Max Planck appointed her his assistant, her first paid post, and she marked his students' papers. She was the first woman to hold such a position in Prussia.

Meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner also has a crater on which world, where nearly every feature bears a woman's name?

Venus has a crater called Meitner, and all but three of its features honour women, real or mythical. She also has a crater on the far side of the Moon and an asteroid, 6999 Meitner.

The German laboratory that created meitnerium also developed beams of carbon ions as a treatment for which disease?

Cancer patients were first treated there in 1997, because carbon ions dump most of their energy at a precise depth. That lets doctors reach tumours close to vital organs.

Which international body, the final authority on element names, officially approved the name meitnerium?

IUPAC, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, adopted the name in 1997 without a fight. Meitnerium was the only proposal for element 109, unlike its much-disputed neighbours.

Lise Meitner, namesake of meitnerium, and Otto Hahn discovered which radioactive element, number 91, during World War I?

Protactinium means the forerunner of actinium, the element it decays into. The pair identified it in 1917 and 1918, and their claim to the discovery was formally confirmed in 1949.

Which far lighter element, found by Otto Hahn in bombarded uranium, did meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner explain?

Barium is about 40 percent lighter than uranium, which no known decay could explain until she saw that the nucleus had split in two. The other fragment proved to be krypton.

When an atom of meitnerium decays by shedding two protons, it becomes which element named after a Danish physicist?

Bohrium is element 107, two places below meitnerium, and honours Niels Bohr. The same German laboratory had created it for the first time just a year earlier.

Meitnerium-278 was first spotted among the decay products of which heavier element, named after a US state?

Tennessine, element 117, decays in four steps to reach meitnerium-278, a chain first seen in 2010. Making it calls for a berkelium target that is itself rare and short-lived.

Solid meitnerium is predicted to be denser than which metal, the densest element that has ever been measured?

Osmium holds the measured record at about 22.6 grams per cubic centimetre, roughly twice the density of lead. Meitnerium is predicted to reach 27 or 28, if enough could ever be gathered.

Meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner slipped out of Nazi Germany in July 1938 on a train across which country's border?

The Netherlands let her in because the physicist Dirk Coster had won over its border officials in advance. He rode with her on a quiet branch line, and German guards may have taken her for a professor's wife.

In 1966 Lise Meitner, namesake of meitnerium, shared which US honour named after the builder of the first reactor?

The Enrico Fermi Award went jointly to her, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann. Too ill to travel, she was handed hers in Cambridge by Glenn Seaborg, the discoverer of plutonium.

Meitnerium was the one name nobody contested in which decades-long dispute over naming elements 104 to 109?

The Transfermium Wars set rival laboratories on both sides of the Cold War against each other until a settlement in 1997. Element 109 escaped because only one name was ever put forward.

Meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner described in 1922 an electron effect usually named after which French physicist?

Pierre Auger found the effect independently in 1923, a year after she had described it, yet his name stuck. Some physicists now call it the Auger-Meitner effect instead.

Which German physicist led the team behind meitnerium with Gottfried Münzenberg and co-discovered five other elements?

Peter Armbruster shares credit with Münzenberg for elements 107 to 112, all first made at the same laboratory. He worked there as a senior scientist from 1971 until 1996.

The first sighting of meitnerium was confirmed three years later by a laboratory at Dubna in which present-day country?

Russia is home to the Dubna laboratory, which repeated the experiment in 1985 and found the tell-tale decay products. Dubna later had an element of its own, dubnium, named in its honour.

In which journal did meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner publish her 1939 explanation of the splitting atom?

Nature printed the short report in February 1939, written with Otto Frisch. It was the first place the newly understood process appeared under the name it still carries.