The periodic table +1 to be a reality soon!

The periodic table may soon gain a new element, physicists at Lund University in Sweden announced Tuesday. A team of Lund researchers is the second to successfully create atoms of element 115. Officials from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry will now review the experiment to determine if Element 115 deserves an official spot on the periodic table of elements. Temporarily named “ununpentium”, Element 115 is super heavy and unstable. It was first created in 2003 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, in collaboration with scientists from California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The initial experiment lasted from July 14 to Aug. 10, 2003, but the scientists spent years preparing for it. On its website, the Lawrence Livermore lab explains the arduous process of discovering a new element. The first step was to produce suitable targets, in this case made of element americium-243, an isotope that has 95 protons and 148 neutrons. Once prepared, the targets are placed inside a cyclotron, where they are blasted with calcium-48 ions, containing 20 protons and 28 neutrons. The collision of the americium-243 and calcium-48 produced element 115.