Hassium is a chemical element with symbol Hs and atomic number 108, named after the German state of Hesse. It is a synthetic element (an element that can be created in a laboratory but is not found in nature) and radioactive; the most stable known isotope, ²⁶⁹Hs, has a half-life of approximately 9.7 seconds, although an unconfirmed metastable state, ^277mHs, may have a longer half-life of about 130 seconds. More than 100 atoms of hassium have been synthesized to date.