This year, all science textbooks will need to be updated because four new elements are officially inserted in the seventh row of the periodic table of elements.
The four elements are 113, 115, 117 and 118. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry formally recognized the new elements and was announced last December 30.
The last update before the four elements was 5 years ago in 2011. Last 2011, two elements were added to Dmitri Mendeleev's table namely Flerovium (114) and Livermium (116).
Everyone in the Chemistry world is pleased to know that the 7th row in the periodic table of elements is finally complete. Inorganic Chemistry Division president of IUPAC Jan Reedijk says, "The chemistry community is eager to see its most cherished table finally being completed down to the seventh row."
Three of the four new elements were discovered by a team of Russian and American researchers from Dubna, Tennessee and California. They discovered element 115, 117 and 118 while element 113 was discovered by a Japanese research team.
The elements are not natural. Instead, they were synthesized inside laboratories. Before the official announcement, the four elements were given temporary names and symbols since it was very hard to prove their existence. The new elements were very hard to reproduce since they were fragile, decaying immediately into simpler elements after being synthesized.
Japanese research team RIKEN lead researcher Kosuke Morita is eager to continue unveiling new additions to the periodic table of elements, "Now that we have conclusively demonstrated the existence of element 113, we plan to look to the uncharted territory of element 119 and beyond."
The next step is giving names to the new elements. Traditionally, elements will be named after mythological concepts, a place or even a scientist.
Before the official naming of the elements, temporary names have been given to them: ununtrium, ununpentium, ununseptium and ununoctium respectively.