In January, 2001 the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna,
published results [1] that described the decay of the isotope
292Uuh, which was produced in the reaction of
248Cm with 48Ca. It has a half-life of about
0.6 milliseconds (0.0006 seconds) and decayed into 288Uuq.
On May 11th, 2001, the institute reported synthesizing a second
atom, and that the properties confirmed a region of "enhanced"
stability. Confirmation of these results is still pending.
In 1999, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced the discovery of elements 116 and 118, in a paper published in Physical Review Letters. The following year, they published a retraction after other researchers were unable to duplicate the results. In June 2002, the director of the lab announced that the original claim of the discovery of these two elements had been based on data fabricated by the principal author Victor Ninov.