In 1989, at the height of the cold war, two theoretical physicists, one a Russian and the other an American, met at a conference on nuclear power and agreed that the two sides should be working together.
“We come together and say, ‘you’ve got this, we’ve got that’,” Yuri Oganessian told Rebecca Mileham in a 2018 article for the Royal Society’s ‘Research Culture’ journal. Oganessian, a Russian physicist who is now the head of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, continued saying; “nothing is guaranteed, but all the people who are with you understand. We are all trying together – there is a kind of connectivity that I like very much. The principle is that you contribute as much as you can.”
In 2002, Oganessian and a team of Russian and American physicists, working at the Russian facility about two hours north of Moscow, created a new element.
Oganesson, named in honor of the leader of the team that created the element (Og-118 on the periodic table), was formed by hot fusion – bombarding combining californium-249 atoms with calcium-48 ions. Oganesson is extremely unstable and highly radioactive. It is also the heaviest element currently known to man.
At least it was, until last Saturday when a hot fusion of elements including a first ever road start, in one of the biggest venues in all of college football, while wearing one of the heaviest jerseys known to man (the jersey belonging to the Texas Longhorn starting quarterback) and the weight of expectations while carrying the last name of the first family of football quarterbacks led to the creation of what is now the heaviest element known to man … Manningdium-16.
Ok, so maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. Arch Manning’s performance in Columbus, Ohio was hardly radioactive, 17 of 30 for 170 yards, one touchdown and one interception. It was, in reality, an ok performance when compared to many quarterbacks making their first start on the road. But ok was not the expectation that many have placed on the young QB scion. After all, coming into the game, Manning was the odds-on favorite to win the Heisman.
Fair or not, the expectations for Manning were penthouse high while the performance was more sixth-floor walkup.
Nobody was happy with what happened Saturday, least of all Manning himself.
“Yeah, I mean, there wasn’t much to like,” Manning said when asked about his performance.
But the good news is, all of those sky high expectations are now out the door and that may be the key to opening up the Manning we all thought we were going to see coming into this season.
