We follow the winding, radioactive trail of how one lucky mistake reshaped the world, how the world’s greatest physicists risked life and limb to force new pieces onto the periodic table, and how ambition turned into scandal when Victor Ninov faked a discovery so bold it fooled the best minds in the business. From Fermi’s breathless sprints down Italian halls to the cyclotrons roaring in Cold War bunkers, to a single piece of software that hid the seeds of a modern fraud, this is the story of human curiosity tangled with rivalry, secrecy, and the never-ending need to push the limits of what nature will allow. This episode maps the hunt for the island of stability and shows that sometimes, the map isn’t finished—not because it can’t be, but because we can’t help but keep searching.

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