Dubnium

Dubnium is element 105. Like rutherfordium, it was claimed both by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, near Moscow (1968), and by Berkeley (1970), and the two labs share the credit. After a long naming dispute, it was named in 1997 after Dubna itself.

Dubnium atoms are made by fusing lighter nuclei, for example nitrogen with californium, or neon with americium. Most forms decay in seconds or minutes, but dubnium-268, found among the decay products of heavier elements, lasts roughly 16 hours. That is long enough for single-atom chemistry, which shows dubnium behaves much like niobium and tantalum, the elements above it.