FOR less than a millisecond, the world had a new element last month, according to researchers working at the GSI heavy-ion cyclotron at Darmstadt in Germany. Element 110, which has an atomic mass of 269, was detected while atoms of lead were being bombarded by atoms of nickel. The element was discovered by a team of a dozen scientists from Russia, Slovakia and Finland, led by Peter Armbruster, a German physicist. In the early 1980s the Darmstadt team discovered three other elements: numbers 107, 108 and 109. The particle accelerator at Darmstadt is one of three at the forefront of discovering elements. The others are at Dubna in Russia and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California. In 1987 scientists at Dubna claimed to have discovered element 110, but their finding has never been confirmed. Although the new element has an extremely short half-life, researchers are spurred on by the prospect that heavier elements may be more stable. In particular, element 114 is predicted to have a half-life that can be measured in years.