Welcome, Ununseptium!

After years of trying, scientists have finally filled the ever-persistent hole in the periodic table. Nearly a decade after the creation of the heaviest known atom, element 118, physicists have managed to synthesize a few atoms of its neighbor on the periodic table, element 117. Led by Yuri Oganessian of the Joint Institue of Nuclear Research, scientists shot a beam of calcium ions into berkelium. The chemical collision spit out three or four neurons and resulted in the creation of two different isotopes of an element with 117 protons.

So what does this mean? Well, besides for filling in a blank space on the periodic table, scientists hope that this discovery will strengthen the notion of an “island of stability,” a group of superheavy nuclei that may be as stable as Earth’s naturally occurring 92 elements.

Most elements beyond the 92^nd element, uranium, do not exist stably in nature and must, therefore, be made artificially in a laboratory. The 92 elements that are naturally occurring on earth are all stable enough to have existed over Earth’s billion year history. However, the elements after uranium, have shorter half-lives. As heavier elements were synthesized, it appeared that the heavier the element the shorter its half-life. The heaviest elements are highly radioactive and can have a half-life of only milliseconds.

In the 1960’s, nuclear physicists found that key numbers of protons and neutrons on an element added extra stability on a nucleus. If these “magic numbers” existed in larger and previously undiscovered elements, then perhaps some of superheavy elements with the required quantities of protons and neutrons would last longer, producing an “island of stability.”

With the hope of this island of stability present, researchers have strained for ways to create new elements. The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research has been the most successful in recent years, having synthesized elements 113 – 116 and 118. Making element 117 was their next step, though a tricky one. Scientists pummeled the berkelium target with carlicum-48 ions 24 hours a day for 5 straight months. From this painstaking work, scientists managed to pin down just six atoms of element 117. Until the results have been verified, it will be called “Ununseptium,” the Latin word for 117.

Although this might seem like an enormous amount of work for nothing, very rarely do scientific experiments results in leaps and bounds. Experiments like this explore the physical world in a way that explorers and sailors did in previous centuries.

I, for one, welcome Ununseptium to the periodic table!