The seventh row of the periodic table has been completed with the addition of four new elements. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPC) has officially filled slots 113, 115, 117, and 118 with the tentatively ununtrium, ununpentium, ununseptium, and ununoctium.

These are the first new elements to be officially added to the period table since felrovium and livermorium in 2011.

This from PBS:

Japan’s RIKEN Institute has been credited for the discovery of ununtrium (113), while ununpentium (115), ununseptium (117) and ununoctium (118) were discovered by scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia; California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

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“The chemistry community is eager to see its most cherished table finally being completed down to the seventh row,” Professor Jan Reedijk, President of the Inorganic Chemistry Division of IUPAC, said in a statement.

A comparison of the basic ring structure of the carbon compound graphene with that of a similar hydrogen-based structure synthesized by Carnegie scientists.
Credit: Carnegie Science

A new study shows remarkable parallels between hydrogen and graphene under extreme pressures.

The study was conducted by Carnegie’s Ivan Naumov and Russell Hemley, and can be found in the December issue of Accounts of Chemical Research.

Because of hydrogen’s simplicity and abundance, it has long been used as a testing ground for theories of the chemical bond. It is necessary to understand chemical bonding in extreme environments in order to expand our knowledge of a broad range of conditions found in the universe.

It has always been difficult for researchers to observe hydrogen’s behavior under very high pressure, until recently when teams observed the element at pressures of 2-to-3.5 million times the normal atmospheric pressure.

Under this pressure, it transforms into an unexpected structure that consists of layered sheets, rather than close-packed metal – which had been the prediction of scientists many years ago.

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