Abstract
The search for heavier elements has been an exciting endeavor for nuclear scientists for many decades. This was invigorated after the first predictions that nuclear shell effects might render superheavy elements to have lifetimes long enough for their experimental study, or even their occurrence in Nature. A fascinating aspect concerns the question of their chemical properties: will they conform to the well-established structure of the Periodic Table of the Elements, or will so-called relativistic effects—a result of the high velocities of electrons in the vicinity of highly-charged nuclei—lead to dramatic deviations? Chemical studies of the heaviest elements are complicated by small production rates of single atoms-at-a-time and by short half-lives, but have still reached the heaviest currently known elements.
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