The limit of known half-lives of superheavy massive nuclei has been pushed down by two orders of magnitude with the observation of the half-life of a neutron deficient rutherfordium isotope. In measuring a half-life so short, researchers demonstrated how certain excited states have longer half-lives, thus fleshing out our understanding of fission. Within a heavy atom a delicate balance is at play, offsetting the Coulomb repulsion of the positively charged protons with just enough attractive nucl...