In 1964, a Soviet team led by Georgi N, Flerov at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, bombards plutonium-242 with ions of neon-22.

Claiming to have obtained an isotope of element 104 that had a mass number of 260 and a half-life of 0.3 second, they announce the discovery of element 104, as 104-260, and suggest the name kurchatovium to honor Soviet nuclear physics pioneer Igor Kurchatov.

The Soviet team then performs a series of chemical experiments with the isotope to demonstrate that it behaves in a manner that had been predicted for the element.

When Dubna researchers later use a more refined measuring technique, however, they find that the half-life of the isotope is 0.1 second, not 0.3 second as originally reported.

This finding throws doubt on the previous chemical experiments, because the results of those experiments could not have been obtained with atoms having a half-life of 0.1 second.