Still rooting for an Island of Stability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability
The headline goes a bit far. They postulate that some elements, e.g. silver, are the result of the fission of extraordinarily high atomic number elements. There are no actual observations of such elements.
Just today I was listening to this very nice podcast on the subject: [0]
The paper on archive: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.06844
Atomic mass of at least 260: yes, but... what does it mean? How much would it weight, on Earth, compared to Uranium or Molibdenum?
There's some cool science fiction / conspiracy theory out there about antimatter reactors and stable Moscovium 115. Our part of the galaxy is a desert for stable heavy elements.
Something I've been curious about lately is: why do we find elements on Earth clumped together, for example veins of iron or gold? I can understand coal or oil since that comes from something organic that put it there. But what about elemental substances? When I throw stuff into my blender or spice mixer it gets pretty homogeneous. Surely an exploding star ought to mix things up better than that. So is there something that brings the iron & gold back together again? I don't know if this is a question for an astrophysicist, chemist, or geologist, but I suppose HN has all three. :-)