You’ve probably heard of it. Maybe you saw it on a late-night History Channel binge or heard a guy named Bob Lazar talking about flying saucers in the Nevada desert. It sounds like science fiction. Honestly, for a long time, it kind of was. But in the real world—the one with white lab coats and particle accelerators—what is element 115?
It's called Moscovium.
It exists. It’s on the periodic table right between Flerovium and Livermorium. But don't expect to find a chunk of it sitting in a mine somewhere. This stuff is weird, fleeting, and arguably one of the most misunderstood things in modern chemistry.
The Scientific Reality of Moscovium
Let's get the textbook stuff out of the way first so we can get to the fun, slightly crazy part. In 2003, a team of Russian and American scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, finally "made" it. They didn't dig it up. They smashed calcium-48 ions into americium-243.
Boom. Element 115.
It didn't last long. We're talking about a half-life of about 220 milliseconds for its most stable isotope, moscovium-290. That is blink-and-you-miss-it fast. If you had a gram of it—which is impossible to actually manufacture right now—it would vanish into other elements before you could even realize you were holding it.
Why is it so hard to keep?
Nature likes stability. Atoms are basically a balancing act between protons and neutrons. Once you get past Uranium (element 92), atoms get "heavy" and bloated. They become radioactive. They want to fall apart. Moscovium has 115 protons. That’s a lot of positive charge shoved into a tiny nucleus. It’s basically an extrovert trying to stay in a room that's way too small; eventually, it’s going to burst out the door.
Physicists call these "superheavy elements." They are synthetic. You won't find Moscovium in nature because any Moscovium created in a supernova billions of years ago would have decayed into lead or something else stable long before Earth even formed.
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The Bob Lazar Factor: Where the Myth Began
You can't talk about what is element 115 without mentioning Bob Lazar. In 1989, Lazar went on Las Vegas news and claimed he worked at a site called S-4 near Area 51. He said he saw nine different UFOs and that they were powered by—you guessed it—element 115.
This was decades before the element was actually synthesized in a lab.
Lazar’s story is wild. He claimed that element 115 was a stable metal that could be used as fuel. According to him, if you put it in a small reactor, it would produce its own gravity field. This "gravity propulsion" is how the crafts supposedly moved. He described it as a heavy, orange-ish metal.
Science, however, has some issues with this.
First, the Moscovium we’ve made is incredibly unstable. It doesn't sit around in a reactor; it decays in a fraction of a second. Second, Lazar claimed it was "stable," which led to the popular scientific theory of the Island of Stability.
The Island of Stability
This isn't just a sci-fi trope. Serious physicists like Glenn T. Seaborg proposed this back in the 1960s. The idea is that as we keep adding protons and neutrons to atoms, we might eventually hit a "magic number" where the nucleus becomes stable again.
Imagine a stormy sea of radioactive, short-lived elements. The Island of Stability is a hypothetical place on the periodic table where superheavy elements might last for minutes, days, or even years.
Is Moscovium on that island?
Current experiments suggest we’re on the shores, but we haven't hit the "sweet spot" yet. Some theorists think moscovium-299 or higher isotopes might be more stable. But we can't make those yet. Our current technology isn't "neutron-rich" enough to build them. So, for now, Lazar’s "stable fuel" remains a mystery—or a tall tale, depending on who you ask.
How Do You Actually Make It?
Making Moscovium is less like chemistry and more like high-speed billiards. You take a cyclotron (a massive circular particle accelerator). You get a beam of calcium atoms moving at about 10% the speed of light. Then, you aim them at a thin foil of americium.
Most of the time, the atoms just fly past each other.
Sometimes, they collide and shatter.
But once in a billion tries, the nuclei fuse. They stick. For a fraction of a second, you have element 115. The scientists know they’ve found it not because they see it under a microscope, but because they track the "decay chain." They watch as it spits out alpha particles and turns into element 113 (Nihonium), then element 111 (Roentgenium), all the way down.
It’s forensic science at the atomic level.
Gaming and Pop Culture: The Zombies Connection
If you didn't hear about element 115 from Bob Lazar, you probably heard about it from Call of Duty. In the "Zombies" game mode, Element 115 (also called Ununpentium in the game's lore) is the stuff that reanimates the dead. It’s found in meteors. It powers "Wonder Weapons."
It’s a perfect plot device. It’s real enough to sound smart but mysterious enough to justify teleportation and undead Nazis. This pop-culture saturation is why the keyword is so popular. People want to know if the "Zombie juice" is real.
Spoiler: It's not. Real Moscovium won't bring your cat back to life, though the radiation it emits would be pretty nasty if you were close enough to it.
Why Should We Care?
Why spend billions of dollars to make a few atoms that disappear in a heartbeat?
It's about the limits of the universe. We’re trying to find out how many protons you can cram into one space before the laws of physics say "no more."
There are practical hopes, too. If we ever find a truly stable superheavy element, it could change everything. We’re talking about materials that are incredibly dense, perhaps possessing unique superconducting properties. Maybe Lazar was wrong about the UFOs but right about the potential. We just don't know yet.
Every time we synthesize Moscovium, we learn more about the strong nuclear force. That’s the "glue" that holds everything in the universe together. Understanding that glue is the key to fusion energy, advanced materials, and maybe, eventually, deep-space travel.
The Reality Check
Is element 115 an alien power source? No evidence for that exists. Is it a real, fascinating part of the periodic table? Absolutely.
Right now, Moscovium is officially recognized by the IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry). It was named after the Moscow region to honor the scientists who discovered it. It’s a trophy of human ingenuity. We took the building blocks of the universe and forced them to make something that hadn't existed for billions of years.
Actionable Steps for the Curious
If you're fascinated by the intersection of fringe science and nuclear physics, don't just take a YouTuber's word for it. You can actually track the real data.
- Check the IUPAC Periodic Table: Look at the formal technical data for Moscovium. It’s listed as a "Post-transition metal," though its chemical properties are mostly theoretical because we can’t gather enough of it to test.
- Research the Dubna Experiments: Look into the work of Yuri Oganessian. He’s the only living person with an element named after him (Oganesson, 118). His team is the one that actually brought 115 into our world.
- Explore the Island of Stability: Read up on the shell model of the nucleus. It explains why we think certain "magic numbers" of protons (like 114, 120, or 126) might lead to elements that don't disappear instantly.
- Separate Lore from Lab: When you read about Element 115, check the context. If the article mentions "anti-matter reactors," it's likely speculative or based on the Lazar narrative. If it mentions "alpha decay" and "cross-sections," you’re looking at the real science.
The story of Moscovium is still being written. We are currently trying to reach element 119 and 120. Each step takes us further into the unknown, proving that sometimes, reality is just as strange as the conspiracy theories.