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New Element 115 Takes a Seat at the Periodic Table
Scientists create a very heavy atom with a very short life span
By Jeffrey Kluger
Aug. 28, 2013
28 Comments
It isn’t carbon, it isn’t nickel, it sure as heck ain’t gold — it
doesn’t even have a formal name. But never mind that. The
newly created superheavy element, announced today in a
paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters and
known so far simply as element 115 — for the number of
protons in its nucleus — is a very real thing. So real that it’s
been officially welcomed into the periodic table of elements,
the atom’s equivalent of winning a seat on the Supreme
Court.
Element 115, officially labeled ununpentium as dictated by
international chemistry naming rules, is neither a natural nor
practical thing. Unlike the first 92 elements on the table, it
was created artificially, just as all of the others from 93 to 118
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were. Like those other made-to-order elements too, this one
was created in a particle accelerator, and no sooner had it flashed into existence than it flashed
out — in less than a second. But that was more than enough time for physicists at Lund
University in Sweden to detect the scattering of smaller particles it left behind. Reverse
engineering that debris, they could confirm that the new element had indeed been present. The same kind of atomic forensics is
behind nearly all of the great findings made possible by particle accelerators — including last year’s confirmation of the existence of
the Higgs Boson.
For this very tiny sample of the very heavy element, the Lund scientists fired atoms of calcium (with its proton count of 20) into atoms
of americium (95 protons) and got element 115. Even particle physics is sometimes as simple as basic addition. The new element is a lot
heavier than iron (77) or even lead (82). The heaviest, naturally occurring element, holding the No. 92 spot, is uranium.
Nobody pretends that the as-yet unnamed big boy will have much real-world use. As Dirk Rudolph, the physicist who led the work at
Lund University, dryly told the Telegraph, “Given the production rate — let’s say, two atoms per day — practical implications are farfetched.” But as with all pure physics, what’s practical to you and me is not necessarily what’s powerful and game changing to
scientists, and in this case, element 115 can provide a lot of insight into how elements are created in nature and how the universe itself
came into being. It may also help scientists creater even heavier — but far stabler — elements down the line, ones that really could
have everyday applications.
And about that name? The Swedish research team was not the first to create element 115. As long ago as 2004, a team of American and
science.time.com/2013/08/28/new-element-115-takes-a-seat-at-the-periodic-table/print/
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New Element Created. Now, What to Call It? | TIME.com
Russian scientists led by S.N. Dmitriev at Russia’s Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions produced the same atom. New elements
aren’t considered confirmed, however, until the work can be repeated, which is why it took the latest announcement to earn the new
element its formal seat at the periodic table. But the original discoverer still reserves the right to pick the name.
For now, it’s stuck with its clunky ununpentium moniker, the two un’s coming from the Latin unum, for the number one, and the pent
coming from the Greek word for five. That name had already been in pop-cultural use as a mysterious element in both the Tomb
Raider and Call o f Duty video games. But most folks are betting that Dmitriev — who, after all, hails from the land of Tolstoy,
Chekhov and Dostoyevsky — will come up with something a little more lyrical.
An earlier v ersion o f this story included a typographical error. In the first paragraph, periodic table appeared as period table. The
term w as typed correctly elsewhere in the story.
Jeffrey Kluger
Jeffrey Kluger, senior editor, oversees TIME's science and technology
reporting.
science.time.com/2013/08/28/new-element-115-takes-a-seat-at-the-periodic-table/print/
Kluger's latest book is
The Sibling Effect: What
the Bonds Among
Brothers and Sisters
Reveal About Us.
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