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Earth Japan United States News Science Technology

Four Newly Discovered Elements Receive Names (theverge.com) 191

Press2ToContinue quotes a report from The Verge: The proposed names for recently discovered superheavy elements are: Nihonium and symbol Nh, for the element 113; Moscovium and symbol Mc, for the element 115; Tennessine and symbol Ts, for the element 117; Oganesson and symbol Og, for the element 118. This isn't finalized. Not sure I even like some of these, and maybe you feel the same way. Above are the proposed names that will substitute for the current placeholders (e.g., ununpentium, ununseptium). Nilhonium, Moscovium, and Tennesine are all named for places; Oganessen is named for the Russian physicist Yuri Oganessian. But we have until November to lobby for other names. Here's a chance to go down in history and name an element on the periodic table. How about naming one Elementy McElementface?
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Four Newly Discovered Elements Receive Names

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  • Oganesson and symbol Og

    So THAT is what they mean when they say someone is the "OG"...

  • Elerium-115 (Score:5, Funny)

    by lcarnevale ( 1691570 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @05:11AM (#52280201)
    Element 115 should be named Elerium, of course http://www.ufopaedia.org/index... [ufopaedia.org]
    • .I was just thinking the exact same thing. Too bad none of these elements have a gravity field that extends outside their own electron shell.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Um, they all do. All the way to the edge of the universe.

        • All the way to the edge of the universe.

          It's turtles all the way down, my friend. All the way down.

          So.... "turtlanium" and "waydownium"?

    • 117: MasterChiefium?
    • Maybe we need a chryssalid terror mission to convince Moscow to see our point of view on this one...
    • by lgw ( 121541 )

      More seriously, I hope we get to 137 while all the researchers who want to name it Feynmanium (Fy) are still alive. He certainly deserves it, plus he published a paper about that element and the problem it posed for theory at the time. (For those who don't know, 137 is a special number to physicists - half of them probably have it as the combination to their briefcases - it's from the fine structure constant, and shows up all over the place).

  • by Shinobi ( 19308 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @05:14AM (#52280213)

    Elements being named after locations is not exactly new, so I don't understand the submitters whining.

    Terbium, Holmium, Ytterbium, Erbium, Thulium, Lutetium, Hassium... The list goes on...

  • by Anonymous Coward
    Just so all the non-Americans can have something else to whinge about besides Aluminum.
    • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @07:12AM (#52280539) Homepage

      I'm sorry, but "aluminium" is outright wrong.

      Humphry Davy, the man who isolated it, never called it that. He called it "aluminum" and "alumium". Never aluminium. The latter was suggested by an anonymous critic who said that he didn't like the sound of aluminum, that it didn't sound "classical" enough to him. Never mind that the classical elements were overwhelmingly -um, not -ium: ferrum, plumbum, argentum, stannum, cuprum, aurum, hydrargyrum, etc. The first element ending in -um added to the known elements since ancient times was platinum, also not a -ium. Also discovered before aluminum were molybdenum and tantalum.

      The reason that many elements started getting endings of -ium rather than just -um wasn't because "-ium was more classical" - it's because they were often named after the things they were isolated from which often had i near the end, making it a convenient joining stem - magnesium from magnesia, zirconium from zirconia, yttrium from yttria, and on and on. Some did it indirectly as well, such as beryllium, which was originally glucium (from glucina), but had the gluc- replaced with beryl to distinguish it from other sweet-compound-forming elements. If you want to use -i as the joining stem on aluminum, it should be called alumium - which is one of the names Davy suggested. It comes from alumina, not "aluminia".

      Call it alumium if you want (that would be a perfectly reasonable name), but your added, ahistorical syllable addition in "aluminium" will continue to grate on my ears. There's no such thing as "aluminia"

      • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @07:43AM (#52280679)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by Quirkz ( 1206400 )

          Great. Now when you've only got one atom/piece of it, nobody will know if they should call it alumn or alumnus.

      • by Friggo ( 765910 )

        To nitpick a bit, Humphry Davy never isolated it, he tried, but didn't get there.
        According to the Wikipedia article the one credited with isolating aluminium was the German scientist Friedrich Wöhler in 1827.

      • Careful, think about it. This is just what the Aluminati want you to think!

        • by Rei ( 128717 )

          I think Icelandic was right to just avoid the whole conflict altogether and just call it "ál" ;)

  • by RevRagnarok ( 583910 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @05:19AM (#52280227) Homepage Journal

    This article is tagged Japan because "Nihonium takes its name from the Japanese name for Japan and was the first new element discovered there, at the RIKEN lab." ( http://www.popsci.com/four-new... [popsci.com] )

  • Most natural elements are not known from most people (Rubidium, a.n. 37, 16th most abundant on Earth...) ; these super heavy elements need names, but that's for the physicists and other inner circles interested in physics.
  • Periodic Videos (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bender Unit 22 ( 216955 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @05:26AM (#52280237) Journal

    Allow me to push one of my favorite YouTube channels to you. :)

    New Elements Named - Periodic Table of Videos :
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • How about naming one Elementy McElementfaceium?

    FTFY

    • by Sique ( 173459 )
      The -ium is not required, albeit abundant. Except Helium, none of the noble gases has one, they all end in -on, same as Carbon or Boron. All halogens end in -ine. Neither do Bismuth, Zinc, Manganese, Nickel or Cobalt end in -ium. Iron (Ferrum), Copper (Cuprum), Lead (Plumbum), Silver (Argentum) and Gold (Aurum) just have the -um, not the -ium.
      • The -ium suffix is the standard for metals other than those that were already named in ancient times. Helium was named as a metal by mistake, because it was first discovered in the spectrum of the Sun.

        • Helium was named as a metal by mistake, because it was first discovered in the spectrum of the Sun.

          Seeing as the name of the sun god is/was "Helios," not to mention that "helum" would be weird, I'm skeptical of your claim. I would think that "helium" is the closest pseudo-Latin form of the Greek word.

        • by lgw ( 121541 )

          Metals are only named -ium because it's a -um stuck on the end of a base word that already had the "i". he suffix is the -um part, the "i" part is (sometimes) from the root. E.g., Helios becomes helium.

  • by wiredog ( 43288 )

    I miss OGG the open source caveman.

  • Daltonium (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GrahamCox ( 741991 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @06:46AM (#52280439) Homepage
    And still no Daltonium. It's simply wrong that the scientist who first came up with the modern concept of what an element actually is (and which led to the periodic table itself) is ignored while far less known names get the honour.
  • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @06:47AM (#52280445) Homepage

    Come on, if you're going to insert letters the element's name, at least call it "Nihilonium" - an element that doesn't care whether anything continues to exist or not. ;)

  • AMD should've made a lightweight CPU using ununpentium instead of Silicon.
  • There should ALWAYS be a Cowboy Neal option in there.

  • Orangium (Score:5, Funny)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @08:04AM (#52280767) Journal

    When I'm president, all new elements will be named after me and it will be tremendous. They will be classy, classy elements. Not loser elements like Nihonium.

  • I guess this petition [change.org] never had a high chance of succeeding, but it's still a pity we're not going to have octarine in the periodic table.

  • So that people can look at it on the Periodic table and exclaim "What is this even doing here?
  • And ... who would care?
  • I mean, Lemmy Kilmister was/is a legend, and these new elements are heavy metals, right?
  • by LeadSongDog ( 1120683 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @09:58AM (#52281399)
    ... it's elementary!

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