New elements formally named by scientists
11/07/2011
Three newly discovered chemical elements were officially given names last week by the General Assembly of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics at a meeting in London.
They are darmstadtium, roentgenium and copernicium, and have the atomic numbers of 110, 111 and 112, respectively.
None of the three elements occur in nature and all were created in Darmstadt, Germany, at the Society for Heavy Ion Research Laboratory (Gesellschaft fur Schwerionenforschung) by bombarding heavy nuclei with beams of other atoms, according to the New York Times.
Jennifer Welsh of Live Science said the trio of elements are large and unstable — so unstable, in fact, that scientists have been unable to experiment on them and know very little about them. Darmstadtium, roentgenium, and copernicium have been classified as Transuranium or “Super Heavy” elements, according to Red Orbit.
