Chemistry textbooks as we know it are officially out of date, as four new elements will soon be added to the periodic table. Elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 have formally been recognized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. USA TODAY
Time to update all those science textbooks across the globe.
Scientists in Japan, Russia and America discovered four new elements that have been added to the periodic table, completing its seventh row, according to the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).
The discoverers are invited to suggest permanent names and symbols for the new elements, according to an IUPAC statement on Dec. 30.
The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee were credited with enough evidence to discover elements 115, 117 and 118.
A team in Japan was given the credit for the discovery of element 113, according to IUPAC.
"The chemistry community is eager to see its most cherished table finally being completed down to the seventh row. IUPAC has now initiated the process of formalizing names and symbols for these elements temporarily named as ununtrium, (Uut or element 113), ununpentium (Uup, element 115), ununseptium (Uus, element 117), and ununoctium (Uuo, element 118)" said Professor Jan Reedijk, president of the Inorganic Chemistry Division of IUPAC, in a statement.
Meh. These elements were not actually unknown. It's just very difficult to synthesize any of them and keep them intact long enough to study them.
No scientist was actually shocked that these elements can exist. They've known about them for decades.
And competent science texts don't really need to be rewritten because they would already mention these elements.
Also, the research on some of these elements is far from complete. At least one of these I would not consider an established element because they lack some fundamental information about it. So I think they jumped the gun a little on that one.
These are not elements found in nature, at least not in our region of the universe.
Element with the highest possible atomic number
The number of possible elements is not known. A very early suggestion made by Elliot Adams in 1911, and based on the arrangement of elements in each horizontal periodic table row, was that elements of atomic weight greater than 256± (which would equate to between elements 99 and 100 in modern-day terms) did not exist.[113] A higher—more recent—estimate is that the periodic table may end soon after the island of stability,[114] which is expected to center around element 126, as the extension of the periodic and nuclides tables is restricted by proton and neutron drip lines.[115] Other predictions of an end to the periodic table include at element 128 by John Emsley,[3] at element 137 by Richard Feynman,[116] and at element 155 by Albert Khazan.[3][n 17]
Bohr model
The Bohr model exhibits difficulty for atoms with atomic number greater than 137, as any element with an atomic number greater than 137 would require 1s electrons to be traveling faster than c, the speed of light.[117] Hence the non-relativistic Bohr model is inaccurate when applied to such an element.
Relativistic Dirac equation
The relativistic Dirac equation has problems for elements with more than 137 protons. For such elements, the wave function of the Dirac ground state is oscillatory rather than bound, and there is no gap between the positive and negative energy spectra, as in the Klein paradox.[118] More accurate calculations taking into account the effects of the finite size of the nucleus indicate that the binding energy first exceeds the limit for elements with more than 173 protons. For heavier elements, if the innermost orbital (1s) is not filled, the electric field of the nucleus will pull an electron out of the vacuum, resulting in the spontaneous emission of a positron;[119] however, this does not happen if the innermost orbital is filled, so that element 173 is not necessarily the end of the periodic table.[120]
