And it closes the periodic table so nicely. We really shouldn't be trying to go any further until and if they can predict the island of stability with high confidence.
They thought they could predict it with high confidence a couple decades ago and then they learned more and confidence lowered again. That's kind of the nature of science, use what you know to find out what you don't know, and keep adjusting your models as you go.
That's also something of the paradox at work at something like this: you sometimes can't have models that strongly predict interesting or "good" outcomes (such as the "island of stability") without a lot more data from experiments and maybe you aren't running the right experiments because you don't have the right model, but you won't have the right model until you run more experiments.
The way this stuff seems to work, it doesn't make sense to go theory-first. We can spin up a bazillion theories about it, with no clue which if any are anywhere near true. We've got to just try it, gather experimental data, and see if we can build any more solidly-backed theories around that data.
I think that's the way science pretty much always goes. For the most clear example look at the unbelievable mountain of information we have on the distant cosmos. Yet it all assumes the homogeneity of physics in the universe. There's no real reason to believe this is true outside our sample of 1, but without believing this it would be basically impossible to study the cosmos, because we'd have no way to assess differing physics in distant locations, at least not until we are able to reach those locations and carry out experiments.
Drugs are also the same with many, if not the majority of drugs having come from things that were initially intended to treat something else, only to find out what you created has stronger effects elsewhere. The most obvious and amusing one being that Viagra was meant to be a heart medicine. It turned out to have little effect on heart disease, but had a rather pronounced side effect in half the participants!
> We really shouldn't be trying to go any further until and if they can predict the island of stability with high confidence.
I don't know much about chemistry since I haven't done anything with it in the last 20ish years. What need is there to be able to accurately predict it before attempting to synthesize it?
That's also something of the paradox at work at something like this: you sometimes can't have models that strongly predict interesting or "good" outcomes (such as the "island of stability") without a lot more data from experiments and maybe you aren't running the right experiments because you don't have the right model, but you won't have the right model until you run more experiments.