New Element 117 is proven to exist

Physicists working at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany have duplicated and confirmed the ability to create the newest addition to the periodic table of elements. Element 117, officially unnamed as yet, was initially produced in Dubna, Russia in 2010. A group of American and Russian scientists created the super heavy atoms, and colleagues the world over have been trying to confirm the experiment since then.

The newest element had been given a temporary name of ununseptium, following the convention of giving newly created elements temporary names following the pattern of a “numeric root” based on latin or greek, with “ium” as the suffix. The roots go from “un” for one, “bi”,”tri”, “quad”, “pent”, “sept”, “oct” and “en” for nine, then “unnil” for ten, “unun” for eleven and so forth. Thus element 117 is ununseptium.

The newest confirmed element has an atomic number of 117 because that is the number of protons in its nucleus. Uranium is the commonly occurring element with the most protons, with an atomic number of 92. This is considered the “heaviness” of the element and is the source of the scientific term “heavy metal”, which has been metaphorically applied to music and art. Scientists have been able to create heavier elements by forcing more protons into the nucleus of uranium, using nuclear fusion devices.

The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, under the leadership of Y. Oganessian, working with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, have produced most of the new elements since 1999. They are: 113, temporarily named ununtrium, in 2003; 114, permanently named flerovium, with a symbol of Fl, named after Soviet physicist Georgy Flyorov, in 1999; 115, temporarily named ununpentium, in 2003; 116, permanently named livermorium, with a symbol of Lv, named after the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a collaborator with JINR in the discovery, in 2000; 117, temporarily named ununseptium, in 2010, now confirmed and soon to be given a permanent name; and 118, temporarily named ununoctium, in 2002.