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In a period now called the “transfermium wars,” the cycle of discovery and doubt became the leitmotif of Cold War element research.

As the transfermium wars continued, an irony emerged: atomic researchers were chasing immortality through the discovery of elements that quickly blinked out of existence.

Though this round of naming seems to have gone off without a hitch, other dramatic battles over element names have been waged in the past, from the hundred-year-long battle over the element now called niobium to the Transfermium Wars of the 1960s.