Elements added to periodic table

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics have confirmed that two new elements will be added to the periodic table. The elements known currently as ununquadium and ununhexium but lacking official names, take up positions 114 and 116 in the seventh period of the table, among a group of elements known as transition metals.

The two new elements were discovered through the combined work of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna in Russia and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, USA. With seemingly all naturally-occurring elements having been discovered, scientists have taken to generating new elements by changing the atomic structures of existing elements to fit electro patterns and weights as predicted by the layout of the periodic table. In the case of ununquadium and ununhexium, the elements were synthesised by blasting plutonium and curium with calcium atoms in Dubna’s cyclotron apparatus. Only a few atoms of each of the new element were created. Both were highly radioactive and existed for only fractions of a second before they decayed into other more common element.

It has taken over a decade of research for these two elements to be recognised. There remains at least another four elements to by synthesised, with laboratories across the world racing to complete the seventh period of the table.

Naming an element is one of the most prestigious opportunities available to chemists. Berkelium for example was an element synthesised by a team at the University of California in Berkley, California. With no known uses, the element’s discovery can be seen to simply represent an application of theory and a symbol of the institute’s scientific status.

Prior to the two new elements, the last new element to be discovered was Copernicum in 1996 (confirmed in 1999) which was named after the scientist Copernicus who pioneered the idea of the planets moving around the sun – much as electrons were later discovered to orbit the nucleus of an atom.