Alarmingly, man-made Ununtrium, now recognised as the 113th element on the periodic table, as it is currently called, could potentially be used to make nuclear warheads more devastating than those produced with plutonium such as the implosion-type fission bomb exploded over the Japanese city of Nagasaki at the end of WWII in 1945 which killed around 200,000 people.

Ununtrium is so unstable and radioactive that only minuscule amounts of it have been observed and created, so little is yet known about its properties.

If it were put to use, it is likely it could only be within the nuclear power or even weapons industries.

Even respected scientists have raised the question of why it, and other synthetic heavy metals, are being made.

In a YouTube video, made before the official recognition, Sir Martin Poliakoff, Research Professor in Chemistry at the University of Nottingham, said: "You might actually ask why should anyone want to make a few atoms of these artificial elements.

"I think the answer, and I don't know definitely, there have been predictions, although the elements of this part of the periodic table are very unstable, that there may, at heaver elements, be one or two which are surprisingly stable, and might last for very much longer.