Have we reached the shores of the island of stability?

175 minutes for chemistry

After the recent addition of four new elements to the period table, Charlie Sudlow discusses where these names came from and what the future holds for element hunting.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has ratified four new elements to be officially added to the periodic table. The newly accepted names will be for elements 113, 115, 117 and 118. As of 2016, these new elements will be known as Nihonium, Moscovium, Tennesine and Oganesson. These new additions mean that the seventh row of the periodic table is now complete.

The elements were first synthesised between 2002 and 2010 and were temporarily named ununtrium, ununpentium, ununseptium, and ununoctium. By December 2015, IUPAC recognised their discovery and allowed the teams involved to suggest names.

As IUPAC have recently updated their guidelines for the naming of newly discovered elements, the teams were limited to - a mythological concept or character, a mineral or similar substance, a place or geographical region, a property of the element or a scientist.

Nihonium (Nh) was first discovered by a team of Japanese scientists at the Riken Centre for Accelerator-Based Science in Japan. The name proposed by the researchers was based on the Japanese word ‘Nihon’ which means Japan. Moscovium (Mc) and Tennesine (Ts) were first produced by a collaboration of Russian and American scientists and so the names they proposed were based on the city of Moscow and the state of Tennessee. Finally Oganesson (Og) was named after Yuri Oganessian. Yuri Oganessian is widely considered to be the world’s leading researcher in super heavy metals, having previously discovered Flerovium. He is presently researching into the island of stability. Prior to the naming of Oganesson the only element named after a living person was Seaborgium named for Glenn Seaborg.