A highly radioactive metal, of which only a few atoms have ever been made.

Fact Box

Uses

At present it is only used in research.

History

There are 7 isotopes of meitnerium with mass numbers in the range 266 to 279. The longest lived is isotope 278 with a half-life of 8 seconds. Meitnerium was first made in 1982 at the German nuclear research facility, the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI), by a group headed by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried Münzenberg. They bombarded a target of bismuth with accelerated iron ions. After a week, a single atom of element 109, isotope 266, was detected. This underwent radioactive decay after 5 milliseconds.