RIKEN’s Superheavy Element Production Team group director Kosuke Morita speaks during a press conference at RIKEN research center in Wako, Tokyo suburbs, Saitama prefecture, Japan, 09 June 2016.

But that privilege is not assured. US and Russian researchers have also been hard at work on element 113, and say that they have created 56 atoms of it since 2003. None of these sightings has been ...