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Re:Four New Names Officially Added to the Periodic Table of ... by kolinko on Friday December 02, 2016 @05:07AM (#13087448)
If I'm not mistaken, one of the reasons for doing this is figuring out if there is an island of stability somewhere there - a heavy element that somehow remains stable for an extended periods of time.

And there is only one way to figure this out.

Re:Four New Names Officially Added to the Periodic Table of ... by semi-extrinsic on Friday December 02, 2016 @11:41AM (#13090058)
Note that it's not just "maybe there is randomly some new heavy element that's stable out there". We see definite hints in the behaviour of known heavy elements, and in our best models of nuclear physics, that point towards a possible island of stability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability