The periodic table of elements has four new entries, meaning its seventh row has finally been completed. The new elements were discovered by chemists in Japan and a joint US-Russian mission.
The four additions - which have the atomic numbers 113, 115, 117 and 118 - have been temporarily named ununtrium, ununpentium, ununseptium and ununoctium. The scientists will now be allowed to come up with something more poetic.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
They are the first elements to be added to the periodic table, which lists all known chemical elements by atomic number (the number of protons each has in its nucleus), since 2011, when 114 and 116 were included.
The man-made elements were created in the lab by a highly technical process of colliding nuclei and monitoring the subsequent radiation. Super-heavy, they exist only briefly.
Elements 115, 117 and 118 were identified by a US-Russian team from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
That team also claimed to have found element 113 - but IUPAC has credited its discovery to a group of scientists at the Riken institute in Japan. It will be the first element to have its name chosen in Asia.
There are strict guidelines about the naming of elements: they must be called after a mythological concept, a mineral, a place or country, a property or a scientist.
Kosuke Morita, who led the research at Riken, said the team now planned to "look to the uncharted territory of element 119 and beyond", according to The Guardian.
-
Cloudbursts: what are the 'rain bombs' hitting India and Pakistan?The Explainer The sudden and intense weather event is almost impossible to forecast and often leads to deadly flash-flooding and landslides
-
Atoms into gold: alchemy's modern resurgenceUnder the radar The practice of alchemy has been attempted for thousands of years
-
Crossword: August 19, 2025The Week's daily crossword
-
Home Office worker accused of spiking mistress’s drink with abortion drugSpeed Read Darren Burke had failed to convince his girlfriend to terminate pregnancy
-
In hock to Moscow: exploring Germany’s woeful energy policySpeed Read Don’t expect Berlin to wean itself off Russian gas any time soon
-
Were Covid restrictions dropped too soon?Speed Read ‘Living with Covid’ is already proving problematic – just look at the travel chaos this week
-
Inclusive Britain: a new strategy for tackling racism in the UKSpeed Read Government has revealed action plan setting out 74 steps that ministers will take
-
Sandy Hook families vs. Remington: a small victory over the gunmakersSpeed Read Last week the families settled a lawsuit for $73m against the manufacturer
-
Farmers vs. walkers: the battle over ‘Britain’s green and pleasant land’Speed Read Updated Countryside Code tells farmers: ‘be nice, say hello, share the space’
-
Motherhood: why are we putting it off?Speed Read Stats show around 50% of women in England and Wales now don’t have children by 30
-
Anti-Semitism in America: a case of double standards?Speed Read Officials were strikingly reluctant to link Texas synagogue attack to anti-Semitism
