One would think if there were anything to it, it would have made some kind of news since. Even a fleeting scintilla of something promising surely would have spawned a wave of clickbaity YouTube vids, no?

I assume that you’re talking about this article. As far as I am aware, it went nowhere. It appears to have only been cited once according to research gate and only to point out the fact that it is speculative.

The issue is that we also can’t really test this. The most massive atom we have created so far is Oganesson with an atomic number of 118. We have gotten nowhere near the 145 required to test this; and such an element likely exceeds the superheavy island of stability.

For 115-118 that we have synthesized; no anti-gravitational properties observed as far as I am aware.

Elerium-115 will change the world once the invasion is over!

I’d also add here that the 115-118 we’ve been able to make this far is in very limited quantities due to the expensive nature of creating super heavy elements. I believe these elements also decay rather quickly so testing their full range of properties is also limited.

My own speculation is that we likely won’t see more research into gravitic properties of superheavies until it’s easier to manufacture them either from cost or novel methods

i know of no reason for massive elements to not obey gravity. Why would a massive atom have antigravitational properties?

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I think it’s crazy conspiracy stuff related to Bob Lazar’s famous (and famously crazy) statements regarding the supposed use of element 115 to power antigravity drives in flying saucers which he claims to have reverse-engineered at Area 51.

No further comment seems necessary.

I’m not familiar with anything related to Lazar (not big on the conspiracy scene), but I agree he isn’t credible. My question was in relation to research actually conducted in the academic community, not his Area 51 nonsense.

The running idea that was last being looked into was that superheavy elements have the potential to bend spacetime, similar to how planets do (but obviously on a much smaller scale).

Thank you both for your elaborations! I actually didn’t even know we had made it as far as creating 118 yet, Moscovium was the last headliner I recalled.

It definitely makes sense that we won’t see much more funding in this field until tangible results are produced. Between the major expense required, and the (borderline) nonexistent results, I can see it being easily another few decades before we see any progress; that’s assuming it’s even possible.

My primary hope is that continued research on this might lead to some other amazing discoveries along the way. Gravity seems to be one of the most elusive concepts for us to expand on, but technology advances exponentially so fingers crossed we see some traction!

I’d have thought, but the Nuclear Fusion breakthrough actually caught me by surprise! That research had been making steady progress, but I didn’t really see much about it (outside of personal research) until the breakthrough actually occurred. I was primarily curious to see if anyone here was up to date on the topic whether though personal interest or being actively involved in the research.

From my understanding mass and energy both have an impact on AG potential, and the lack of sufficient energy (along with the superheavy elements) was a big barrier to further research. Another comment pointed out we’ve made it to 118 so far; if we can get Tokamaks to pump out significantly more than 6 water kettles worth of energy through NF, and solve the problem of the ridiculously short half-lives, I wonder what we’d manage to discover (related to AG or otherwise).

Absolutely a good point though, I guess we’ll just have to wait until the wave of clickbait hits before getting excited. No complaints here, we’ve had plenty of exciting breakthroughs this year as-is!