[Mitch]

So why study elements at the extreme of the periodic table? Because we want to learn about their Chemistry! This has been made easier with the recent work of Dvorak et al. The work created 4 atoms of the heaviest element we can currently do Chemistry with, element 108(not sure if the 112 chemistry paper is out yet). The paper focuses on the isotope's physics, which it has lots of interesting bits and pieces to it,  but I'll be focusing on Chemistry, sort-of.

The new isotope Hassium-270's decay chain from the paper is shown below.


Since that's an ugly way to show decay information, I'll summarize it myself with the isotope trading cards method. The decay properties of Hs-270 and Sg-266 from this experiment are shown together below.

The yellow signifies it's an alphe emitter and the green signifies it decays by spontaneous fission. The star on the half-life is meant to signify that the half-life wasn't measured by the experiment, but determined from systematics.

Now quickly to Chemistry.
When Nuclear Chemists make heavyelements, we also make a bunch of other elements from all over the periodic table too. So we have to separate what we want from the junk. The two methods of choice are either a physical separation (magnets and electric fields) or by a chemistry separation (in this case the formation of a volatile tetroxide). To prove that their chemical separation method was indeed only separating out group 8 elements, they also produced some Osmium in tandem with Hassium and observed both their decay signatures in their detectors, the paper notes they had trace Actinium contamination coming to their detectors too.

Now the question for the audience of Chemists.
The heavyelement community now has ready access to a long lived group 8 element, do you have any suggestions for interesting chemical investigations with it? Remember, due to the short half-life of 108 and the current experimental setup, any ligands or chemistry would have to occur in the gas-phase so modest volatility is a must. If you have any suggestions post them here.

Mitch being a smart-ass.
Note 1: Chemistry and Engineering News put out a note about the discovery too: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/84/i52/8452hassium.html . Thanks Mark K for pointing it out, link to his soccer website.   
Note 2:The following picture was taken from that article:

Note 3: Couldn't wear a nicer shirt Honza(Jan Dvorak) for the photo?
Note 4: I don't see Honza wearing a face shield or safety thermal gloves, how unsafe. Is the cap still on the detector your filling?

Edit 1: Link to discovery paper.

Mitch