Nihonium is a synthetic chemical element with symbol Nh and atomic
number 113. It is extremely radioactive; its most stable known isotope,
nihonium-286, has a half-life of about 10 seconds. In the periodic
table, nihonium is a transactinide element at the intersection of period
7 and group 13. Its creation was reported in 2003 by a
Russian–American collaboration at the Joint Institute for Nuclear
Research in Dubna, Russia, and in 2004 by a team of Japanese scientists
at Riken in Wakō, Japan. The discoveries were confirmed by independent
teams working in the United States, Germany, Sweden, and China. In 2016
the element was officially recognised and naming rights were assigned to
Riken, as they were judged to have been first to observe it. The name,
approved in the same year (announcement pictured), derives from a
Japanese word for Japan, Nihon. Few details are known about nihonium, as
it has only been formed in very small amounts that decay away within
seconds.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihonium>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1796:
French Revolutionary Wars: French forces defeated the Austrians
at the Battle of Arcole in a manoeuvre to cut the latter's line of
retreat.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arcole>
1968:
NBC controversially cut away from an American football game
between the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets to broadcast Heidi,
causing viewers in the Eastern United States to miss the game's dramatic
ending.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_Game>
2009:
Administrators at the Climatic Research Unit at the University
of East Anglia discovered that their servers had been hacked and
thousands of emails and files on climate change had been stolen.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy>
2013:
Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363 crashed during an aborted landing
at Kazan International Airport in Tatarstan, Russia, killing all 50
people on board and leading to the revocation of the airline's operating
certificate.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatarstan_Airlines_Flight_363>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
monopsony:
1. (economics) A market situation in which there is only one buyer for a
product; also, such a buyer.
2. (economics) A buyer with disproportionate power.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/monopsony>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the
truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.
--Shelby Foote
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Shelby_Foote>