The periodic table has a new 'member'

Elements 114 and 116 are both officially present in the Mendeleev periodic table as the heaviest member.

Both of these elements existed for less than a second before decaying into lighter atoms, but they helped researchers take a step closer in the process of creating heavier elements, possibly Stability exists for decades or longer.

Scientists have found evidence of these two elements for many years, but they have just got an official position in the periodic table after being commissioned by a committee of scientists from the International Union of Chemistry. Pure and application (IUPAC) review and recognition.

Since 1999, many groups of scientists have claimed to be able to create element 114. But the committee said that only two experiments conducted by two research teams in 2004 and 2006 provided convincing evidence. Firstly.

A team led by Yuri Oganessian at the Institute for Nuclear Research Cooperation (JINR) in Dubna (Russia), and the other group led by Ken Moody at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California (USA) is The authors have convincingly demonstrated the existence of elements 114 and 116.

The researchers obtained two elements by squeezing particles of lighter atoms together in an accelerator at JINR. Element 116 is made of radioactive element curium, with 96 protons in the nucleus, and calcium nucleus, with 20 protons.

Two vacant positions in the periodic table have been filled. (Source: Newscientist ).

The nucleus of element 116 only exists for a few milliseconds before dissolving into an alpha particle consisting of two protons and two neutrons and then decaying into element 114. The team can also directly create element 114 by burning particles. Calcium core.

After about half a second, element 114 decays into copernicium with 112 protons. Copernicium is also a new element joining the periodic system table since 2009.

So, what are the characteristics 114 and 116? So far their properties have not been clarified because the number of these two elements is too small and they exist only for a short time, not enough for scientists to evaluate the chemical properties, such as Which elements do they react to?

The two elements 114 and 116 still have no official names and are still temporarily called ununquadium and ununhexium respectively .

The IUPAC Scientist Committee is still looking into studies of elements 113, 115 and 118, but the evidence for these elements is not strong enough to be added to the periodic system.