Names stick for life. Get them wrong and your kids are likely in for a lifetime of hardships.
Luckily, that principle doesn’t apply to elements of the periodic table.
‘Nihonium (Nh),’ Moscovium (Mc), Oganesson (Og) and Tennessine (Ts) are four elements that were officially name-approved and joined 118 other elements on the periodic table Wednesday. With the latest additions, the periodic table is now complete down to the seventh row.
What makes Nihonium (Nh) — named after the country Japan (nihon) — stand out is, maybe not it’s super-creative name, but rather the fact that it’s the first element to be discovered by a researcher from Asia.
Kosuke Morita, the father of ‘nihonium’ and a physics professor at Kyushu University said his team’s addition to the periodic table was exciting and symbolic.
“All the elements before were discovered in the West, and it is wonderful that we now have an element discovered in Asia,” said Morita in a statement.
Beavering away since 2003
Nihonium is an extremely radioactive, superheavy, synthetically-made element that Morita’s research group has been working on since 2003.
The group synthesized element 113 for the first time in July 2004, repeating the feat in April 2005 and August 2012. They used RIKEN University’s heavy ion linear accelerator — a particle accelerator that increases the kinetic energy of charged ions to produce experiments.
In December 2015, Kosuke Morita submitted his team’s proposed name for element 113 to the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. It was officially approved after undergoing a public review between June to November 2016.
Next up, Morita wants to focus on discovering even heavier elements that might make it onto the periodic table.
‘Godzillium’ anyone?