Periodic table adds three super-heavy elements

from wired

GaplekNews--The periodic table -- that biblical graph of chemical elements and a stalwart resident of classroom walls -- just got three boxes bigger. The General Assembly of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) has approved the names of three new elements.

Meet darmstadtium (Ds), roentgenium (Rg) and copernicium (Cn) -- three new super-heavy elements that are so large and unstable that they can only be synthetically produced in the lab and, even then, rapidly decay into lighter elements.

All three were first synthesised in the mid 1990s at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany -- Ds was made by bombarding a lead-208 target with nickel-62 ion, Rg by the cold fusion between nickel ions and a bismuth target, and Cn by firing accelerated zinc-70 nuclei at a target made of lead-208 nuclei

Element 110, darmstadtium, got its name from the city where the GSI is located. Roentgenium (111) is named after German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, who scooped up the first Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the X-ray. Copernicium, which is now element 112, is named in memory of Renaissance astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus -- the chap who figured out that Earth is not, in fact, at the centre of the universe.

Robert Kirby-Harris, secretary general of IUPAP, said, "The naming of these elements has been agreed in consultation with physicists around the world and we're delighted to see them now being introduced to the Periodic Table."

There are still more elements out there that have been made in labs around the globe, but have yet to go through the stringent review process that would give them official names and prestigious placements on the periodic table. Ultra-heavy radioactive elements 113 through 118 still remain in limbo. wired