Four New Elements Added To The Periodic Table
Elements with atomic numbers 113, 115, 117, and 118 have been added to the periodic table. The new elements were added after the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) reviewed scientific studies published by teams of researchers in the United States, Japan, and Russia. The committee deemed that the researchers had “met the criteria for discovery,” as the press release notes, which essentially means that the researchers were able to create them in the lab, if only fleetingly. These elements are among the heaviest in the periodic table and aren’t known to exist outside the lab. They’re highly unstable—just to formulate them in the lab, the researchers had to crash lighter nuclei into one another. The new elements existed for less than a second before breaking down into other elements. These elements, which complete the seventh row of the periodic table, are the first to be added since 2011, when flerovium (element 114) and livermorium (element...