Four New Elements Added to Periodic Table

The periodic table now has its seventh row completed with the introduction of four new chemical elements.

The elements 113, 115, 117 and 118, discovered by scientists in Japan, Russia and the United States are the first to be added to the table since 2011, when elements 114 and 116 were added. Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev produced the first true iteration of the table in 1869.

The Japanese research team was granted the right to name new element 113, the first on the periodic table to be named by Asian scientists, the team’s institute said last week.

Japan’s Riken Institute said a team led by Kosuke Morita was awarded the rights from global scientific bodies — the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) — after successfully creating the new synthetic element three times from 2004 to 2012.

It is the first element on the periodic table to be discovered and named by Asian scientists, Riken said.

Synthetic elements do not occur naturally on Earth and are produced artificially through experiments.

A release on IUPAC’s website confirmed the accomplishment.

“Several studies published from 2004 to 2012 have been construed as sufficient to ratify the discovery and priority,” it said.

The name has yet to be decided, but Riken said that Morita will propose one in 2016. The three remaining elements, 115, 117, and 118 – known temporarily as ununpentium (Uup), ununseptium (Uus), and ununoctium (Uuo), respectively – will also get new names.

Read more at Discovery News