Science/Tech
Four Elements Become Permanent on the Periodic Table
The 7th row of the periodic table received its new entries. December 30th was the day when the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry declared that jointly Russia and U.S. have enough evidence that can claim the discovery of new elements 115, 117 and 118. IUPAC credited the discovery of element 113 to a Japanese scientist RIKEN in Wako. The two groups produced the elements by colliding lighter nuclei into one another and then tracking the decay of radioactive super-heavy elements subsequently. Researchers at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia's Dubna and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, amongst the institutions that has been awarded with the credit of elements 115, 117 and 118, claimed 113 too after their experiments in 2004 and 2007. However, after receiving the recognition for three other elements, they let this one go, said Dawn Shaughnessy, lead of experimental nuclear and radiochemistry group at Livermore. "I'm personally very happy with IUPAC's decision," she says, reported Biotechin.asia.
The newly recognized elements will be revealed in early 2016, says IUPAC executive director Lynn Soby. Through the official recognition of the elements, the discoverers will get the right to choose a name and a symbol. Element 113 will be the first symbol to named and discovered by an Asian researcher, reports Science News.
"A particular difficulty in establishing these new elements is that they decay into hitherto unknown isotopes of slightly lighter elements that also need to be unequivocally identified" commented JWP chair Professor Paul J. Karol, "but in the future we hope to improve methods that can directly measure the atomic number, Z". Four new elements will be added to the periodic table permanently and their discovery will be verified by the global chemistry organization that supervises the table, says Press Telegraph
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