Uranium, move over. It appears the mass king of the naturally occurring elements has been defeated. Scientists appear to have discovered a naturally occurring element with a mass of 292. Scientists speculate the atomic number of this new element to be 122 well above the atomic number of 92 for Uranium.

A team of scientists from Hebrew University of Jerusalem used a very basic technique to identify the new element. Theorists have predicted that there is a stable region in the periodic table with atomic numbers between 121 and 153 called the superheavy actinide group. The team figured if the elements are supposed to be stable then they should be able to find a few atoms here and there.

They used thorium-90 samples and passed these samples, atom by atom through a mass spectrometer. The spectrometer spits out the atomic mass of each element it sees in a sample. The results showed the masses of the two isotopes of thorium, 230, and 232, but every now and again there was something with an atomic mass of 292.

If this new element, called at the moment unumbibium, does in fact exist, its half life will be at least 100 million years and will open a new door to super dense metals.