Element 115 was given the name moscovium after the Moscow region, the location of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, while element 117 is named tennessine to honour the contributions of several institutions in the American state of Tennessee.
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The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry on Wednesday recommended the names of four recently discovered elements that are now only known by numbers.
After Iupac officially verified the four new elements late in December 2015, the organization gave naming rights to the scientists and laboratories that discovered them.
115 – moscovium (Mc): named after the Moscow region, where the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna (Russia) is located.
Element 118: Organesson (with the symbol Og) was named after the nuclear physicist Professor Yuri Oganessian.
Unless the public voices strong opposition to the new names by November 8, IUPAC will enshrine the elements into the table permanently.
These new elements were discovered using the “hot fusion” approach, developed and implemented by Oganessian at JINR.
“Nihonium” alludes to “Nihon”, the Japanese name for the Asian island nation. It and element 116, now known as flerovium and livermorium, were the last to join the periodic table, back in 2011. “The names of all new elements in general would have an ending that reflects and maintains historical and chemical consistency”, the IUPAC reported in a statement announcing their decision. “We wanted to show our research has been supported by the Japanese people”, said Kosuke Morita, a research group director at the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-based Science. The names had been submitted by the element discoverers. In order to “make” their element, and its subsequent discovery, began with “bombarding a thin layer of bismuth with zinc ions traveling at about 10% the speed of light”. If accepted, Oganesson (Og) will only be the second element named for a living person with the first being Seaborgium, named for Glenn T Seaborg. The proposed names had to follow Iupac rules and are now available for public review.
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One of the newest elements on the periodic table could soon be named “tennessine”, in honor of the state’s role in helping to discover it six years ago. Their addition completed the seventh row of the periodic table. So element 117 will become tennessine. Now they’ve got names-nihonium, moscovium, tennessine, and oganesson, respectively.
