// MATTER · ELEMENT 113 / 118atoms.no/elements
Nh113
Nihonium
Nh·Z 113·Unknown·286·⭕ 12B · E Major
▸ The reading
interpretive · artNihonium is Asia's first element — RIKEN's team spent nine years catching three atoms, then named 113 for Japan itself. The periodic table had been a European and American ledger for two centuries; this seat re-drew the map of who gets to add to it. Three atoms were enough.
The science below is cited as science; the symbolic layers are flagged as interactive art.
⚜ Periodic Frequency
12BE Major
a seat struck in brass — testimony, not prediction
the seat has its own room on ⭕ THE OVAL TABLE — tap the code
▸ The lenses
▸ Discovery
RIKEN team led by Kosuke Morita — first element discovered in Asia · Japan · 2004
▸ Stellar origin
Human-madeGroup-13 transactinide. Longest-lived isotope ²⁸⁶Nh has a half-life of about ten seconds.
▸ Reactivity
Predicted to be a soft, dense, volatile metalRelativistic effects predicted to compress Nh's 7p orbitals, producing more lone-pair character than its group-13 homologue thallium.
▸ Applications
- Heavy-element synthesis research
- (No commercial applications)
- (No practical bulk uses)
- (No medical uses)
▸ Curiosity
First element discovered in Asia — RIKEN's Japanese team named it for 'Nihon' (Japan) — completing a transcontinental table that previously had European or American origins.
▸ Related readings
a resonance drawn between readings — not a claim that they share an origin.
Group 13TlThallium
Period 7CnCoperniciumFlFlerovium
p-blockFlFleroviumMcMoscovium
Adjacent ZCnCoperniciumFlFlerovium