Wanting an island of stability
when looking for elements,
we found the opposite instead:
superheavy elements
that blink out of existence.
I fear 118 may be the end:
supercharged electrons in this noble gas
travel near the speed of light, so
time & space bends inside them instead.

I toiled in my Dubna lab for you,
‘til Americans in Tennessee
sent me bits of Berkelium
in packages, wrapped in Lead—
repeatedly rejected by customs.
I found you, but so did Tennessee,
having everything they needed
for research. So why must they take
the credit in naming you too?

With China’s rare earth element mining
stranglehold for electronics, the Omaha,
USA’s NioCorp wants to build a mine to
extract elements like the elusive Dysprosium,
that could help make electric cars...
that’s fitting, when NioCorp was once named
Quantum Rare Earth Developments.

We need rare earth elements
in electronics, & China hoards it—
so, researchers use transitional Tantalum
(atomically thin in sulfides & disulfides)
to make islands in 2 layers.
Tantalum macroscopically entangles,
making heavy fermion materials
perfect 4 all our electronic gizmos.

Berkeley said they found element 102;
Stockholm said they found it 1st,
named for the inventor of dynamite

Soviets questioned both,
starting the transfermium wars—
Cold War research clouded by doubt

America got elements 100 & 101
but not 102, named for not peace
but explosives

French chemist Marguerite Perey
(a protégée of Marie Curie)
discovered element 87
& wanted to call it “catium”
for it’s strong attraction to cathodes.

Irène Joliot-Curie worried
the name catium
would be linked to house cats,
so French chemist Perey
settled on “Francium” instead.

Terbium’s green glow’s known
for tv light or low-E light bulbs,
but fluorescence from Terbium
reveals endospores in the soil

It’s out of this world that NASA
detects endospores w/ Terbium
before travel— so our waste won’t
contaminate space that’d kill

what we’ve come to explore

Supercool Dysprosium-164, make it
a superfluid, flowing without friction
(stir it & it always swirls). Superfluid
atoms overlap, morphing together—
& Dysprosium’s magnetism sticks it
into droplets. Crisscross superfluid
tubes of Dysprosium-164 droplets,
& it becomes a supersolid.

 
Very rare & highly volatile,
radioactive Polonium doesn’t seem useful—
then how was Polonium-210
advertised in 1950s Firestone Spark Plugs?
If claims were true, better
ignition only lasted the 138-day half-life,
so— whether or not it was
dangerous, it’s now safe to order on eBay.

One of the most volatile elements,
neutron star supernovas
made & baked Europium
in Earth’s crust...
I’ve searched for Euros
to see in my blacklight
because Europium in Euro bills
stops counterfeiting—
it’s also in nuclear control rods,
but... Europium in Euros—
how cool is that?