Flerovium would be the last new element to be discovered in the 20th century. The feat was accomplished by slinging calcium at near light speed towards a target of plutonium. While most of the calcium shot through the target like shotgun pellets through a fence, a handful had head-on collisions with the plutonium. The crash briefly joined the two into a monstrous atom composed of 114 protons and 170-odd neutrons. The resulting conglomeration was, of course, highly unstable and broke apart after just a few seconds.

The element is named after Gyorgy Flyorov, a Russian physicist who led Russia's post-WWII effort to make a homegrown atom bomb.