Periodic table's seventh row finally filled as four new elements are added
Four new elements have been added to the periodic table, finally completing the tables seventh row and rendering science textbooks around the world instantly out of date. The elements, discovered by scientists in Japan, Russia and America, are the first to be added to the table since 2011, when elements 114 and 116 were added. The four were verified on 30 December by the US-based International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, the global organisation that governs chemical nomenclature, terminology and measurement. Read more
After nine years of painstaking experiment, researchers in Japan reported yesterday that they have created a third atom of the element 113. That success, according to experts in the field, could see the element officially added to the periodic table. It would be the first artificial element to be discovered in East Asia, potentially giving the Japanese team the right to name it. Read more
On July 23 at 18:55, an event that strongly confirmed the creation of the 113th element was observed by a research team directed by Dr. Kosuke Morita of RIKEN. For 80 days, the team bombarded a 209Bi target with an intense 70Zn beam from the "RILAC" accelerator in RIKEN. The 113th element was first reported as a decay product of 115th element by a group of Russian and American scientists in February of this year, using the fusion reaction of 243Am and 48Ca. However, the production of the 115th element has not been completely confirmed experimentally, because the observed decay chains ended with the spontaneous fission of unknown isotopes. The RIKEN team's results strongly indicate the synthesis of the 113th element because the observed decay chain ended with known nuclides. Read more