Some Heavy Stuff: Four New Elements Added to 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. 

Though the periodic table was created in 1869, scientists haven’t yet filled it in completely, or answered many of the lingering questions surrounding these building blocks of the universe; as these superheavy elements decay, they become other elements that scientists cannot yet identify.

These newly added 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 116), also super heavy metals, were added. 

The new elements have been temporarily named temporarily named ununtrium, (Uut or element 113), ununpentium (Uup, element 115), ununseptium (Uus, element 117), and ununoctium (Uuo, element 118). In the next few months, the teams that discovered these elements will propose new names for them. That's no easy task, but hopefully they will choose names that roll off the tongue a bit better than the placeholders.