Correction to: Nature Chemistry https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-018-0037-4, published online 22 March 2018.

In this In Your Element originally published, there were several inaccuracies and the main text has been revised accordingly: in paragraph 1, the sentence starting “Among the already little-known...”, has been revised to: “Among the already little-known super-heavies, element 108 doesn’t have the controlled reactivity of a seaborgium atom, or the relative stability of fermium — the longest-lived isotope is 257Fm with a net 100 day half-life, and 252Fm is believed to resist spontaneous fission rather well1, though it undergoes α-decay.” The final two sentences of paragraph 2 have been revised to “This approach, however, only works up to element 100 (fermium). The team at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, USSR (now Russia), led by actinide heavyweight Yuri Oganessian, then pioneered the techniques of ‘cold’ fusion (collisions of two early elements such as iron and bismuth) and ‘hot’ fusion (using actinide radionuclides as the targets).” In the first sentence of paragraph 3, “First, a heavy target such as einsteinium or plutonium is bombarded...” has been revised to “In hot fusion, researchers bombard a heavy target such as einstinium or plutonium...”; and in the third sentence, “new accelerators” was changed to “new equipment” and “pushing back the limit to 114” was changed to “pushing back the limit to 118...so far”. In paragraph 4, the sentence beginning “Meitnerium was adopted...” has been revised to “Meitnerium was adopted, but for 108 the suggestion of the German team, led by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried Münzenberg, was the one ratified in 1997: hassium, which honours the German state of Hesse (whose map and coat of arms are pictured).”. Finally, in paragraph 5, the line “specialized detectors had to be built.” was clarified to read: “specialized detectors were built to study its characteristic α-decay and probe its reaction chemistry.”; and at the end of the paragraph, “a measurable amount of” has been removed from the final sentence, and “presumably HsO4.” has been changed to: “presumably HsO4, whose single 269Hs atom was identified by α-decay5.”