They have only ever existed for less than a second, but two new elements were named yesterday – Flerovium and Livermorium.
Don’t expect to find lumps of them lying around – the elements were created by slamming lighter atoms together in a particle accelerator.
They joined the Periodic Table of elements – which hangs on science classroom walls around the world – last year, but were only named today.
What used to be element 114 is now flerovium, honoring the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in Dubna, Russia, where it was created.
Element 116 is now livermorium, for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, home of a scientific team that participated in its creation in Dubna.
Scientists have been unable to study their properties, such as which chemicals they would react with because they are so unstable and disappear soon after they are created.
The chemical symbols are Fl and Lv.
Both names had been proposed last year by the scientists who made the materials by smashing atoms together.
Final approval was announced Wednesday by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.
The man-made elements were created by a team from Russia and another from the U.S. who slammed together the nuclei of lighter atoms in an accelerator.
They reported the results from the experiments in 2004 and 2006.
The Periodic Table, which hangs in science classrooms around the world, arranges all the known chemical elements according to their atomic number. This number reflects how many protons they have in their nucleus.
The heaviest natural element is Plutonium with an atomic number of 94. All heavier elements have been produced synthetically
Element 116 lasts for only milliseconds before it decays into element 114. This in turns lasts for about half a second before becoming Copernicium, which joined the table in 2009.
As newly former elements become heavier and heavier, scientists hope they will become far more stable than the fragments of synthetic matter produced so far.
Some have theorised that elements with 120 or more protons would exist in an ‘island of stability.’ This would mean that they would decay much more slowly with half-lives of days compared to seconds.
Some scientists have even postulated that half-lives could take millions of years.
