The periodic table has been given four new
elements, changing one of science’s most
fundamental pieces of knowledge.
Elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 will now be
added to the table’s seventh row and make it
complete, after they were verified by the
International Union of Pure and Applied
Chemistry on 30 December. But they are yet to
receive their final names or symbols.
The new elements were discovered by team
from Japan, Russia and the USA, who will all
get to name their own new elements.
All of the four new admissions are man-made.
The super-heavy elements are created by
shoving lighter nuclei into each other and are
found in the radioactive decay — which only
exists for a tiny fraction of a second before
they decay into other elements.
The elements have been worked on since at
least 2004, when studies began showing the
discovery and priority of element 113. But they
have all now satisfied the strict tests to be
admitted to the periodic table.
Ryoji Noyori — the former president of Riken,
the Japanese institute that helped discover
element 113 — said that for scientists to have
the achievement recognised “is of greater
value than an Olympic gold medal”. The new elements are the first to be added
since 2011, when the table got elements 114
and 116.
The new discoveries fill in the seventh row, or
“period”, of the table. Because of the way that
the periodic table is put together, the
existence and even properties of those
elements that would fill in some parts of the
table can be guessed at before they are
actually added.
All of the elements are yet to be given
permanent names. The teams that discovered
will be asked to decide what they are called,
as well as to choose the one-, two- or three-
letter symbol that they will be referred to on
the period table.
The elements have to be named after a
mythological concept, a mineral, a place or
country, a property or a scientist.
For the moment, the elements are named after
their number: element 113 is called ununtrium
(which means 113-ium), and has the symbol
Uut. Element 115 is referred to as
ununpentium or Uup; 117 is called
ununseptium or Uus; and 118 is called
ununoctium or Uuo.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/periodic-table-gets-four-new-elements-making-science-textbooks-around-the-world-out-of-date-a6795256.html