Periodic Table's Seventh Row Finally Complete With Newly Discovered Super Heavy Elements

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has finalized four positions for recently discovered super heavy elements. These elements have atomic numbers 113,115,117 and 118, and will be the last four elements needed to fill up the blank spaces of the 7th row(Period) of the Periodic table. The 4th IUPAC Joint Working Party (JWP), completed the review process and confirmed the discovery of these elements, in accordance with the criteria laid down in the IUPAP/IUPAC Transfermium Working Group (TWG), 1991 discovery criteria. Those involved in the discovery of these elements were invited from Japan, Russia and the USA to propose permanent names and symbols for all the four elements.

At present, these elements are known by temporary names and symbols as per the IUPAC nomenclature. The 113th element of the Periodic is called un-un-trium(Uut) where un stands for 1 and trium stands for 3. In the same way, 115, 117 and 118 can be referred to as ununpentium (Uup), ununseptium (Uus), and ununoctium (Uuo) respectively.

Element no 113 was discovered by the RIKEN collaboration team in Japan, whereas the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia in collaboration with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, USA and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA have fulfilled the discovery criteria for the elements bearing atomic numbers 115 and 117. Ununoctium (118) has also been discovered by the joint effort of the NRD (Dubna, Russia) and the LLNL (California,USA).

According to IUPAC press release, the priorities of those elements are carefully incorporated after a thorough verification of the discoveries. To discard any possible loopholes in the process, the whole discussion was recorded by the Joint Working Party consisting members from both the IUPAC and the IUPAP (International Union for Pure and Applied Physics). Assembled reports will be published in an early 2016 issue of the IUPAC journal, Pure and Applied Chemistry (PAC).

JWP chair Professor Paul J. Karol explained that identification of a newly discovered heavy element was a very tough job as they radioactively decay into lighter isotopes which must be equivalently labelled before identification. He hoped that during future discoveries, more sophistication in the technique might directly measure the atomic number (symbolized as Z).

Professor Jan Reedijk, President of the Inorganic Chemistry Division of IUPAC was happy to announce that the chemistry community around the globe was very thrilled and satisfied to see its most cherished periodic table finally being complete up to the seventh row. IUPAC has now initiated the process of formalizing names and symbols for these newly discovered elements.

In 2016, the proposed names will be examined by the Inorganic Chemistry Division of IUPAC for consistency, translatability into other languages, possible prior historic use for other cases, etc. The names should follow the guidelines report released in #-Link-Snipped-#. The new elements maybe named after a mythological concept, a mineral, a place or country, a property, or a scientist.

After divisional acceptance, the names and two-letter symbols will be exhibited for public review for five months, before the highest body of IUPAC, the Council, would take a final call on the names of these four new chemical elements, their two-letter symbols and their entry into the Periodic Table of Elements. IUPAC President, Dr. Mark C. Cesa concluded the press conference with his speech that stated that the researchers along with the IUPAC members had done a commendable job to fill up the blank spaces in the Periodic table.

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