According to Science News the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry announced that a Russian-U.S. collaboration had attained sufficient evidence to claim the discovery of elements 115, 117 and 118. 

It also awarded credit for the discovery of element 113 to scientists at RIKEN in Wako, Japan, the first on the periodic table to be named by Asian scientists. 

Both groups synthesized the elements by slamming lighter nuclei into each other and tracking the decay of the radioactive superheavy elements that followed, SN report added. 

Researchers at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have been credited with discovery of elements 115, 117 and 118. 

According to IUPAC’s website, the fourth IUPAC/IUPAP Joint Working Party (JWP) on the priority of claims to the discovery of new elements has reviewed the relevant literature for elements 113, 115, 117, and 118 and has determined that the claims for discovery of these elements have been fulfilled, in accordance with the criteria for the discovery of elements of the IUPAP/IUPAC Transfermium Working Group (TWG) 1991 discovery criteria. 

“These elements complete the 7th row of the periodic table of the elements, and the discoverers from Japan, Russia and the USA will now be invited to suggest permanent names and symbols,” it added.

Japan’s Riken Institute said a team led by Professor Kosuke Morita was awarded the rights from global scientific bodies – the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) – after successfully creating the new synthetic element three times from 2004 to 2012.

(With inputs from AFP)

Feature image source: AFP