Even great men have not escaped errors on the track of false suns. The Italian Fermi thought that several transuranium elements at once appeared in uranium on bombardment with neutrons. Actually these were the fission fragments of uranium nuclei, elements of the middle of the Periodic System.

   This notorious track persists even in our days. In 1958, a group of scientists in Stockholm synthesized a new element with the atomic number 102. It was named nobelium in honour of the inventor of dynamite. Soviet and American researchers disproved these results. And now the scientists say jestingly that all that is left of nobelium is its symbol "No."

   However, isotopes of the 102nd element have now been obtained quite authentically by other methods in the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A.

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