Discovery of element 115

# Science in the news

The new element doesn't have an official name yet, so scientists are calling it ununpentium, based on the Latin and Greek words for its atomic number, 115.

Periodic Table Courtesy of Tomacco/Getty Images

The heaviest element in nature is uranium, which has 92 protons. But heavier elements-which have more protons in their nucleus-can be created through nuclear fusion.

The man-made 115 was first created by Russian scientists in Dubna about ten years ago. This week, chemists at Lund University in Sweden announced that they had replicated the Russian study at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Germany. 

Element 115 will join its neighbors 114 and 116-flerovium and livermorium, respectively-on the periodic table just as soon as a committee from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) decides on an official name for 115.(share courtesy:http://news.nationalgeographic.co.in/news/2013/08/130828-science-chemistry-115-element-ununpentium-periodic-table/)

In fact, this was the second sighting of the element: Russian scientists had claimed the discovery of element 115 back in 2003, but the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry—chemistry’s equivalent of the International Astronomical Union, which famously demoted Pluto from planet status in 2006—wouldn’t acknowledge it without a confirming experiment from another team. The Helmholtz Center’s work must still be reviewed by both the I.U.P.A.C. and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, but ununpentium is now a step closer to inclusion on the periodic table. If that happens, the International Union will assign it a permanent, official name.(share courtesy:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/08/unumpentium-the-new-artificial-element.html)

Discovery of elements 113 and 115: Two superheavy elements, elements 113 and 115, were recently synthesized through a collaborative effort between scientists from the Physical and Life Sciences Directorate at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and researchers from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at the Flerov Laboratory for Nuclear Reactions in Dubna, Russia. Two isotopes of element 115 survived 30-80 milliseconds before decaying into isotopes of element 113 that survived approximately ten times longer prior to decaying themselves. Following a series of alpha-decays, the element 115 atoms decayed into long-lived isotopes (multiple hours) of element 105 (Db). The great-great-great granddaughter Db isotopes were also chemically identified in subsequent experiments.(share courtesy:https://www-pls.llnl.gov/?url=science_and_technology-chemistry-elements_113_and_115) 

pic courtesy:https://www-pls.llnl.gov/?url=science_and_technology-chemistry-elements_113_and_115

Dmitri Mendeleev

8 February 1834 – 2 February 1907

pic courtesy:http://en.wikipedia.org/

wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev

When the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev published his periodic table of elements in 1869, there were just fifty-nine entries on it. The table grouped those elements

The table also contained thirty-three empty spaces that implied that there were elements still to be discovered. He gave these still-hypothetical elements names like  ekasilicon, ekaaluminium and ekaboron (germanium, gallium and scandium, respectively). “Eka-” is a Sanskrit prefix meaning “one,” so you can think of the names as silicon 1, aluminum 1, and so on. For his predicted eight elements, he used the prefixes of eka, dvi, and tri (Sanskrit one, two, three) in their naming. By year 1939, all of Mendeleev’s boxes had been filled in; the last one was “ekacesium,” now called francium.

What Mendeleev couldn’t have imagined was that scientists would one day begin creating elements not found naturally.(share courtesy:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/08/unumpentium-the-new-artificial-element.html) 

Dmitri Mendeleev and Sanskrit: By giving Sanskrit names to his "missing" elements, Mendeleev showed his appreciation and debt to the Sanskrit grammarians of ancient India, who had created sophisticated theories of language based on their discovery of the two-dimensional patterns in basic sounds. According to Professor Paul Kiparsky of Stanford University, Mendeleev was a friend and colleague of the Sanskritist Böhtlingk, who was preparing the second edition of his book on Pāṇini at about this time, and Mendeleev wished to honor Pāṇini with his nomenclature. Noting that there are striking similarities between the periodic table and the introductory Śiva Sūtras in Pāṇini's grammar, Prof. Kiparsky says:

[T]he analogies between the two systems are striking. Just as Panini found that the phonological patterning of sounds in the language is a function of their articulatory properties, so Mendeleev found that the chemical properties of elements are a function of their atomic weights. Like Panini, Mendeleev arrived at his discovery through a search for the "grammar" of the elements...(share courtesy:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev)