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Element 115: the real moscovium, and the UFO-fuel legend
What element 115 (moscovium, Mc) actually is, who made it and when, how long it lasts, and how it became the fuel of UFO lore. Fact and lore, labelled apart, with sources.
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By The UFO115 desk, UFO115 · Published
Element 115 is two things at once. In chemistry it is moscovium, a synthetic element that exists for a fraction of a second at a time. In UFO culture it is the fuel of a legend that began in Nevada in 1989, years before anyone made a single atom of it. This article keeps the two apart.
The established science
How it was made
Element 115 was produced at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, in collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States.[2] The team fired calcium-48 ions at a target of americium-243 and reported the results in Physical Review C: the paper was received on 8 September 2003 and published on 2 February 2004.[1] The atoms were not seen directly. They were identified by what they turned into: chains of consecutive alpha decays, three of them detected within about 20 seconds and a fourth within about half a second, each ending in spontaneous fission.[1]
How long it lasts
Not long. Live Science lists four moscovium isotopes with known half-lives; the most stable, moscovium-289, has a half-life of about 220 milliseconds.[2] In 2013 Rodi Herzberg of the University of Liverpool, with colleagues in Europe, the United States and Japan, reported an X-ray signal that made the element's existence much more likely. Herzberg's own summary of what it is good for: "It has nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with antigravity devices or spaceships or anything else."[3]
Physicists are interested in it for a different reason. Element 115 sits near the predicted "island of stability", where even heavier elements might hold together for minutes, days or longer because of quantum effects.[3] That is a hypothesis about elements not yet made, not a property of moscovium.
How it got its name
Until it was named, element 115 went by the placeholder name ununpentium (Uup), Latin for one-one-five.[2] In June 2016 IUPAC published the discoverers' proposal, moscovium, symbol Mc, "in recognition of the Moscow region", home of the Dubna institute; the discoverers credited were JINR Dubna, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Vanderbilt University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.[4] After a public review, the IUPAC Bureau approved the name on 28 November 2016.[5]
The lore
Everything in this section is a claim, attributed to the person who made it. None of it is established science.
On 15 May 1989, Las Vegas reporter George Knapp interviewed a man in shadow who used the pseudonym "Dennis". He was Bob Lazar, who said he had worked at a site called S-4, near Area 51, helping to reverse-engineer one of nine flying saucers.[6] Lazar claimed the craft he studied was fuelled by a stable, superheavy element with atomic number 115.[6]
The claims have not held up to checking. MIT and Caltech, where Lazar said he studied, show no record of him, and he has presented no actual evidence of alien technology.[6] Space.com describes him as discredited, and quotes the science writer and UFO skeptic Benjamin Radford: "Almost nothing of what he said was true."[7]
The real element also contradicts the story. Lazar described a stable element 115; every isotope made since 2003 decays in well under a second.[2][6]
Why the story stuck
The legend gave a real gap in the periodic table a job. When an element 115 was finally made in a laboratory, it kept the number from the story, and the story kept going. That gap between a measurable fact and a durable myth is exactly what UFO115's designs are about. The name UFO115 comes from the lore; the science above is why we never present the lore as fact.
Related: the Element 115 collection and the FAQ answer on what Element 115 means.
Sources
Every source below was opened and read on 2026-10-30. Dates are each source's own publication or update date.
- Experiments on the synthesis of element 115 in the reaction 243Am(48Ca,xn)291−x115 (Oganessian et al.), Phys. Rev. C 69, 021601(R). American Physical Society, 2004-02-02.
- Facts About Moscovium (Element 115) (Tim Sharp). Live Science, 2016-12-02.
- Element 115 Could Be Near Elusive "Island Of Stability" (Geoff Brumfiel). NPR, 2013-08-28.
- IUPAC is naming the four new elements nihonium, moscovium, tennessine, and oganesson. IUPAC, 2016-06-08.
- IUPAC Announces the Names of the Elements 113, 115, 117, and 118. IUPAC, 2016-11-30.
- Bob Lazar. Wikipedia, 2026-10-30.
- Area 51: What is it and what goes on there? (Robert Lea). Space.com, 2025-04-09.