Ununoctium is the temporary IUPAC

International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry is an international federation of National Adhering Organizations that represents chemists in individual countries. It is a member of the International Council for Science . The international headquarters of IUPAC is located in Zürich,...

 name

Systematic element name

A systematic element name is the temporary name and symbol assigned to newly synthesized and not yet synthesized chemical elements. In chemistry, a transuranic element receives a permanent name and symbol only after its synthesis has been confirmed. In some cases, this has been a protracted and...

 for the transactinide element

Transactinide element

In chemistry, transactinide elements are the chemical elements with atomic numbers greater than those of the actinides, the heaviest of which is lawrencium ....

 having the atomic number

Atomic number

In chemistry and physics, the atomic number is the number of protons found in the nucleus of an atom and therefore identical to the charge number of the nucleus. It is conventionally represented by the symbol Z. The atomic number uniquely identifies a chemical element...

 118 and temporary element symbol

Chemical symbol

A chemical symbol is a 1- or 2-letter internationally agreed code for a chemical element, usually derived from the name of the element, often in Latin. Only the first letter is capitalised...

 Uuo. It is also known as eka-radon

Mendeleev's predicted elements

Professor Dmitri Mendeleev published the first Periodic Table of the Atomic Elements in 1869 based on properties which appeared with some regularity as he laid out the elements from lightest to heaviest....

or element 118, and on the periodic table of the elements it is a p-block

P-block

The p-block of the periodic table of the elements consists of the last six groups minus helium . In the elemental form of the p-block elements, the highest energy electron occupies a p-orbital.-See also:...

 element and the last one of the 7th period. Ununoctium is currently the only synthetic

Synthetic element

In chemistry, a synthetic element is a chemical element that is too unstable to occur naturally on Earth, and therefore has to be created artificially. So far 30 synthetic elements have been discovered—that is, synthesized...

 member of Group 18. It has the highest atomic number and highest atomic mass

Atomic mass

The atomic mass is the mass of a specific isotope, most often expressed in unified atomic mass units. The atomic mass is the total mass of protons, neutrons and electrons in a single atom....

 of all the elements discovered so far.

The radioactive

Radioactive decay

Radioactive decay is the process by which an atomic nucleus of an unstable atom loses energy by emitting ionizing particles . The emission is spontaneous, in that the atom decays without any physical interaction with another particle from outside the atom...

 ununoctium atom is very unstable, and since 2002, only three atoms (possibly four) of the isotope have been detected.