Science: 4 new elements found

Periodic Table with new elements, 2016, Science Alert

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News coming across the virtual wire is Four new elements confirmed. The numbers given them are 113, 115, 117, and 118; and they complete the 7th row of the periodic table. According to Gizmag these elements do not exist in nature, but were "confirmed to have been created for the first time."

My question is: are the real atoms with 113, 115, 117, and 118 protons lurking somewhere in nature, to be discovered sometime in the future, or are we making things up as we go along. Quoting the Gizmag article:

Element 113, for example, was created by using a linear accelerator to bombard a thin layer of bismuth with zinc ions travelling at about ten percent of the speed of light in hope that, in rare instances, the bismuth and zinc atoms would fuse to form a element. The resulting super-heavy atom of 113 would then decay and turn into other unstable radioactive isotopes, which would decay nearly as fast.

The result was that the scientists who created the new element had to spend years tracing back the event through a labyrinth of isotopic breakdowns to prove that they descended from the new element. Then, the JWP of the IUPAC had to review the literature to make sure no mistakes were made.

Fundamental as chemistry is to science, it has a kind of mystical aura to it. Russian chemistry professor Dmitri Mendeleev pieced together the periodic table in 1869 "to correct the properties of some already discovered elements and also to predict the properties of eight elements yet to be discovered." In Mendeleev's time 60 elements were known. Later in the Wikipedia article about Mendeleev, there's this:

As he attempted to classify the elements according to their chemical properties, he noticed patterns that led him to postulate his periodic table; he claimed to have envisioned the complete arrangement of the elements in a dream.

Another possible case of a chemist dreaming a solution (pun alert!) is August Kekule who suggested the structure of the benzene ring. His dream of a snake biting its tail has become famous; it was notably cited by Carl G. Jung in support of his ideas on alchemy. However, according to a piece in the New York Times, the story may not be true.

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Currrent atomic model, Newcastle School, SCIENCE-esl

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Other elements have been added in modern times. Here's a summary of the current periodic table's contents:

A total of 94 elements occur naturally; the remaining 20 elements, from americium to copernicium, and flerovium and livermorium, occur only when synthesised in laboratories. Of the 94 elements that occur naturally, 84 are primordial. The other 10 naturally occurring elements occur only in decay chains of primordial elements. No element heavier than einsteinium (element 99) has ever been observed in macroscopic quantities in its pure form, nor has astatine (element 85); francium (element 87) has been only photographed in the form of light emitted from microscopic quantities (300,000 atoms).

For more information on the new elements, check out Four elements have just earned a permanent spot in the periodic table at Science Alert.


-- Marge