4 New Elements Are Added To The Periodic Table

For now, they're known by working names, like ununseptium and ununtrium — two of the four new chemical elements whose discovery has been officially verified. The elements with atomic numbers 113, 115, 117 and 118 will get permanent names soon, according to the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.

With the discoveries now confirmed, "The 7th period of the periodic table of elements is complete," according to the IUPAC. The additions come nearly five years after elements 114 (flerovium, or Fl) and element 116 (livermorium or Lv) were added to the table.

The elements were discovered in recent years by researchers in Japan, Russia and the United States. Element 113 was discovered by a group at the Riken Institute, which calls it "the first element on the periodic table found in Asia."

Three other elements were discovered by a collaborative effort among the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. That collaboration has now discovered six new elements, including two that also involved the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Classified as "superheavy" — the designation given to elements with more than 104 protons — the new elements were created by using particle accelerators to shoot beams of nuclei at other, heavier, target nuclei.

The new elements' existence was confirmed by further experiments that reproduced them — however briefly. Element 113, for instance, exists for less than a thousandth of a second.

The seventh period of the periodic chart is now complete, thanks to the addition of four new elements.

"A particular difficulty in establishing these new elements is that they decay into hitherto unknown isotopes of slightly lighter elements that also need to be unequivocally identified," said Paul Karol, chair of the IUPAC's Joint Working Party, announcing the new elements. The working group includes members of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.

The elements' temporary names stem from their spot on the periodic table — for instance, ununseptium has 117 protons. Each of the discovering teams have now been asked to submit names for the new elements.

With the additions, the bottom of the periodic table now looks like a bit like a completed crossword puzzle — and that led us to get in touch with Karol to ask about the next row, the eighth period.

"There are a couple of laboratories that have already taken shots at making elements 119 and 120 but with no evidence yet of success," he said in an email. "The eighth period should be very interesting because relativistic effects on electrons become significant and difficult to pinpoint. It is in the electron behavior, perhaps better called electron psychology, that the chemical behavior is embodied."

Karol says that researchers will continue seeking "the alleged but highly probable 'island of stability' at or near element 120 or perhaps 126," where elements might be found to exist list enough to study their chemistry.

Source: http://www.npr.org

Local Geology Makes Sunday's Earthquake in India Complex

A magnitude-6.7 earthquake shook Manipur state in India Sunday (Jan. 3), collapsing buildings and causing at least 10 deaths, according to news reports.

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The quake hit at 4:35 a.m. local time, 18 miles (29 kilometers) from the city of Imphal, in an area where large temblors are common. These quakes occur because of the collision of the India and Eurasia tectonic plates, which are converging at a rate of about 2 inches (5 centimeters) per year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The geology of the area is particularly complex, said Harley Benz, the scientist-in-charge at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado.

"This is not the case of something like the San Andreas, where you have a well-defined fault and it's shallow and it has a relatively small width to it," Benz told Live Science. "This is in the mantle, where you have a broad area of deformation.

Source: Yahoo news