The periodic table’s seventh row is full, four new elements were found

The new elements were synthesized by scientists in Japan, Russia and America, working at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Four new elements have been added to the periodic table, finally completing the table’s seventh row and rendering science textbooks around the world instantly out of date. Competing claims over three decades for element 104, rutherfordium by American scientists and kurchatovium by Russian scientists, continued from the 1960s until 1997, when IUPAC established rutherfordium as the official name for the element.

The first true iteration of the table was produced in 1869 by the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev.

The elements were created by smashing lighter nuclei into each other and then, according to the Independent, analyzing the radioactive decay which existed for a tiny fraction of a second afterwards. But research has revealed slightly longer lifetimes for more recent superheavy elements, raising hopes that scientists may eventually discover the so-called “island of stability” – a group of elements that are both superheavy and stable.

Yahoo Finance reports that the Japanese research team who discovered element 113 has been granted the right to name the new element 113.

Scientists are touting this discovery carrying a “greater value than an Olympic medal”.

Officially, all elements from atomic numbers 1 (hydrogen) to 118 (ununoctium) have been discovered – with the last four just being recently confirmed.

The future names that these elements will take have to relate to their chemical properties, as well as to the places they are more common in.

When these processes are complete, the President of the Inorganic Chemistry Division forwards the Division’s final recommendation for the name of a new element to the Council of the IUPAC for formal approval by the Union and publication in Pure and Applied Chemistry.

The three remaining elements, 115, 117, and 118 – known temporarily as ununpentium (Uup), ununseptium (Uus), and ununoctium (Uuo), respectively – will also get new names.

Details of element 113’s discovery have been reported in the Journal of Physical Society of Japan.

Illustration of element 117.

The scientists will be invited to suggest permanent names and symbols before they are presented for public review.

For the moment, the elements are named after their number: element 113 is called ununtrium (which means 113-ium), and has the symbol Uut. “With this demonstration, the grounds for a stronger claim were laid”.

“We just never saw another event”, he said.