Periodic Table To Welcome Two New Elements 157
adeelarshad82 writes "Chemistry's periodic table can soon welcome livermorium and flerovium, two newly named elements, which were announced Thursday (Dec. 1) by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. The new names will undergo a five-month public comment period before the official paperwork gets processed and they show up on the table. Three other new elements just recently finished this process, filling in the 110, 111 and 112 spots."
Re:Real elements - or theoretical? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are no stable transuranium elements.
Yet. Perhaps we will find a transuranium island of stability.
Re:Real elements - or theoretical? (Score:4, Insightful)
We haven't found them yet because:
1) Making elements that large is really, really hard
2) Even if there exists an element with a half-life of, say, a few million years, it's been so long since the last supernova that finding one of them in nature would be impossible.
3) We're just now producing elements in the range where we might find more stable elements (according to current theory). These are exciting times, as we explore the boundaries of what we believe to be the island of stability.