
Four New Names Officially Added to the Periodic Table of Elements - zonotope
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/science/periodic-table-new-elements.html
======
idlewords
The recipe for oganesson is pretty amazing. Shoot calcium at californium
target for _four months_ to make an atom of it. Repeat as necessary (but
remember it has a half-life of under 1 millisecond).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oganesson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oganesson)

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TheSpiceIsLife
Of what value is a substance that has a half life of 1 ms?

~~~
xorxornop
It's not, really - but the techniques used in its nucleosynthesis probably
are.

Incidentally, if the compound itself does in the end turn out to be useful,
it'll be for the same reason - it'd likely be used as some intermediate in a
wider-scope reaction. As is the case for many, many (almost all,
realistically) otherwise-"useless" chemicals.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Righto, that helps, thank you.

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ars
This fills out the last row of the current table.

What comes next will be interesting. Will it be a plain row? Or will there be
another block like the p-block and f-block (the g-block)?

It might not be possible to find out, because the elements might not live long
enough to stop being ions and fill their shells.

Or maybe we'll find an element in the island of stability somewhere there and
we'll use that to find out.

~~~
dnautics
At some point (172, they think) it has to stop, because electrons need to go
faster than c to orbit. near this point, the electric field of the nucleus
pulls electrons out of electron-positron virtual particles ('out of the fabric
of space') and you get a "beta+" decay.

~~~
wyager
The naive orbit model predicts a limit of z=137. The Dirac equation (more
realistic) predicts z=173. But that's only using QED, no other forces. We
could end up being surprised with a much higher maximum limit.

One might argue that a neutron star is a counterexample that comes into play
when you include gravitation. It's sort of a really big nucleus, with gravity
as the dominant attractive force and degeneracy pressure as the dominant
repulsive force.

~~~
OscarCunningham
Neutron stars aren't a counterexample because they have z=0! They have a lot
of neutrons but no protons.

~~~
Steuard
This isn't entirely true: near the surface of a neutron star, there's a
coexistence of neutrons, protons, and electrons in a type of thermal
equilibrium.

(I'm embarrassed to say that I don't remember offhand how to estimate the
ratios involved, but I do remember my PhD candidacy exam committee looking
pretty happy with me for deriving it on the fly during my oral. A few days
later, one of them commented to a group of us who'd just finished the exam,
"Congratulations: at this moment, you know more physics than you ever have or
ever will again". I guess he was right!)

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sndean
IUPAC has a much more informative article [0], giving the reasoning behind the
names. This was published back before they were officially added to the table,
though.

[0] [https://iupac.org/iupac-is-naming-the-four-new-elements-
niho...](https://iupac.org/iupac-is-naming-the-four-new-elements-nihonium-
moscovium-tennessine-and-oganesson/)

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Namrog84
Nihonium, Moscovium, Tennessine and Oganesson

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simion314
There is a youtube channel named "Periodic Videos" that makes incredible
videos about elements and molecule, they made a few videos about the new
elementsmthis is one of them
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wswa0NuBbMw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wswa0NuBbMw)

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ttflee
For Unicode Consortium, there might be four more new glyphs. The Chinese
Chemical Society would, most likely, translate these new elements each into a
new Chinese glyph.

For existing ones, see
[https://www.iupac.org/publications/ci/2004/2601/3_hao.html](https://www.iupac.org/publications/ci/2004/2601/3_hao.html)

EDIT:

It seems that the calling for naming proposals has started:

[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh-
CN&tl=en&js=y&p...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh-
CN&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chemsoc.org.cn%2Finfo.asp%3Fgid%3D195&edit-
text=)
[http://www.chemsoc.org.cn/info.asp?gid=195](http://www.chemsoc.org.cn/info.asp?gid=195)

EDIT2:

In fact there are quite a lot of existing ancient glyphs in the current
Unicode standard. There is possibility an existing Chinese glyph being reused
for a new element, as suggested by Chinese Chemical Society in the letter
above.

~~~
OskarS
I'm not a native English speaker, but I did go to an all-English speaking high
school. I was a more-or-less conversationally competent in English at the
time, but speaking it and learning from it full time in school was a real
challenge.

I remember clearly that one of the most difficult subjects was chemistry,
because everything suddenly had new names and none of them made any sense. Why
is it "sodium" instead of "natrium", or "potassium" instead of "kalium", when
the elements are Na and K?

For the first six months, I had to basically memorize a table of translations
between my native language and english, and silently translate everything my
teacher was saying to be able to follow along.

~~~
acqq
Then imagine what the Chinese must learn with the mappings.

Regarding the English-German difference in the element names, are there more
than these two that don't match?

I've found this explanation of the historical context for the different names:

[https://www.quora.com/Who-renamed-Natrium-and-Kalium-to-
Sodi...](https://www.quora.com/Who-renamed-Natrium-and-Kalium-to-Sodium-and-
Potassium)

OK, there is also Sauerstoff for oxygen and Wasserstoff for hydrogen.

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ry_ry
As a non-scientist this sounds pretty huge to me, but what actually _are_
these new elements? The article doesn't elaborate.

They're all in a similar numeric range, but are these entirely new elements,
or other elements recategorised?

~~~
ars
> what actually are these new elements?

They are as different from other elements as gold is different from carbon.
Each is unique and unlike any other element, with unknown properties (they
don't last long enough to study, although some guesses can be made).

We are hoping there is a "magic" number, that if we reach can make elements
that actually last long enough to study (because certain numbers of particles
are extra stable because they "fit" together very nicely - like how you can
fit 6 coins around another coin much nicer than 7). That's called the Island
of Stability if you want to look it up.

These elements are on the path to that, so it's important to study them. As of
right now we don't know how to make anything heavier.

~~~
djsumdog
I wonder if there is a limit to how dense a single atom can be. Does there
exist somewhere in the universe, in some massive star, elements that would
construct another row on our table?

I find limits like these interesting (absolute zero, the plank temperature
which may or may not be absolute hot, the speed of light, etc.)

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adrianN
I'm no expert, but my understanding is that a neutron star looks very much
like a ridiculously huge nucleus.

~~~
ars
In some ways. But the neutrons are not bound to each other, and more
importantly the electrons freely transit _inside_ the neutron star and not in
orbit around it, which makes it not like an atom.

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dbg31415
Given all the other news today, I halfway expected these new elements to be
produced by AWS.

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EvanAnderson
I'm happy to have more usable hostnames for my periodic table-themed Customer
sites. I was holding off because "Ununtrium" didn't have a very good ring to
it.

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captainmuon
I wonder why "Oganesson", where "Oganessium" would sound more conventional and
be closer to "Oganessian"? Also, I'm not a chemist, but I thought -ine was
reserved for a certain kind of compound?

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vitus
Probably not, given chlorine, bromine, fluorine, and iodine all end in ine.

~~~
captainmuon
Ah, that's probably the source of my confusion. None of them end in -ine in
German. It's Chlor, Brom, Fluor, Iod. OTOH, there are chemicals with names
like Hydrazine. It's a bit weird that it is supposed to be called "Tennesin"
in German (according to Wikipedia).

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banhfun
Does anyone have an image of the periodic table with the new elements in it?

~~~
Amorymeltzer
Wikipedia does:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:18_column_periodic_table,...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:18_column_periodic_table,_with_Lu_and_Lr_in_group_3.png)

~~~
euyyn
Why is Copernicium (Cn 112) red instead of dark grey?

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evv
Interesting that Tennessine and Moscovium are named in honor of Tennessee and
Moscow. I wonder many elements on the table are named after places.

~~~
foob
Your forgot Nihonium after Japan :-).

It's fairly common for them to be named after places (often where they were
discovered). Some other examples are Americium, Berkelium, Californium,
Darmstadtium, Dubnium, Europium, Francium, and Germanium.

~~~
joering2
From the article:

We can also put to rest suggestions like Lemmium, Octarine and Trumpium.

:)

~~~
coredog64
There's still a chance for Harambite?

~~~
Keyframe
Harambium! Get your naming convention straight!

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kensai
115 will always be Elerium for me... :D

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wfunction
Question: is there any reason to believe the number of elements is not
infinite?

~~~
mseri
AFAIK it is not known how big it could be. However, if you accept the current
atomic models, there are serious issues preventing atoms with number higher
than 135 (or thereabout), things like the electrons needing to move faster
than light to stay around the atom.

I think I had read something about a model accepting over 200 elements, but I
don't remember the details and could not find the draft it in my library.

Update: there is a decent explanation with some reference in the periodic
table wikipedia entry:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table#Element_with_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table#Element_with_the_highest_possible_atomic_number)

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josteink
I'm still disappointed that lemmium didn't make it.

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benmarks
Sorry to be so OT, but at first glance I read this as "Fox News Officially
Added to the Periodic Table of Elements" and was left both impressed and
bewildered.

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bitwize
Great choices of names (nihonium and moscovium being a nice counter to Yankee
self-back-patting like americium, berkelium, and californium), but I'm still
waiting for phlebotinum and unobtainium to get serious consideration...

~~~
coredog64
> being a nice counter to Yankee self-back-patting like americium, berkelium,
> and californium

When you discover and can produce transuranic elements feel free to name them
what you like.

Americium was first produced in 1944 by the group of Glenn T. Seaborg from
Berkeley, California, at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of
Chicago, a part of the Manhattan Project.[0] Berkelium [...] is named after
the city of Berkeley, California, the location of the University of California
Radiation Laboratory where it was discovered in December 1949. [1] Californium
[...] was first made in 1950 at the University of California Radiation
Laboratory in Berkeley [2]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americium)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkelium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkelium)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californium)

~~~
planteen
Nothing beats the village of Ytterby in Sweden... 4 elements named for it!

yttrium (Y) erbium (Er) terbium (Tb) ytterbium (Yb)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ytterby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ytterby)

