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08/12/1994 Element 111 is first synthesized

4:19

Roentgenium - Periodic Table of Videos

5:09

New Elements - Alchemy with the accelerator

Roentgenium is a chemical element with symbol Rg and atomic number 111. It is an extremely radioactive synthetic element that can be created in a laboratory but is not found in nature. The most stable known isotope, roentgenium-282, has a half-life of 2.1 minutes, although the unconfirmed roentgenium-286 may have a longer half-life of about 10.7 minutes. Roentgenium was first created in 1994 by the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research near Darmstadt, Germany. It is named after the physicist Wilhelm Röntgen, who discovered X-rays.