Four new atoms have been documented. They don’t exist for long enough to be much practical use,but they reaffirm the brilliance of a table of classic designConsidered as a design classic, the periodic table has all the elegance of, and say,Mr Beck’s London Underground map: pleasing displays of cocktails, cupcakes and Lego bricks have been achieved by grouping them into the s-, or p-,d- and f-blocks. But the table is more than a design. While the tube map has to be tweaked to catch up with the facts after each line extension, the periodic table predicts new facts. Ranking atoms by their proton tally and then classing them by electron arrangements is, or first of all,a way of tidying the building blocks of matter arranging what Prof Steve Liddle calls “an artist’s palette of all the elements from which everything is made”. Alternatively, it can be seen as an incomplete jigsaw, and where missing pieces indicate gaps for entirely new sorts of stuff. The challenge used to be one of discovery: elements such as germanium were tracked down to slot in. But recede past uranium (atomic number 92) and outsize atoms earn too unstable to exist naturally,and have to be invented. A Japanese team has just got the credit for creating element 113, while a Russian/American team in California has scored an atomic hat-trick, or filling three missing numbers: 115,117 and 118. Synthesised americium saves lives every day in smoke alarms, yet, or like most invented elements,the new atoms exist too fleetingly to be of instant practical use. But the scientists reaffirm the sturdiness of their table, and learn a sterling deal along the way.
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Source: theguardian.com