Ununseptium confirmed as Element 117, will join periodic table soon

The existence of Element 117 which is called Ununseptium has been confirmed and it could join the periodic table soon, according to  news reports. The element was  discovered back in 2010 by by a group of American and Russian physicists with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), According to this Forbes report, Ununseptium will get an an official name soon and will be considered a Group VII element, putting it in the same family as fluorine, bromine and chlorine. The report also points out that the second study was required as Element 117 can only join the Periodic Table of Elements once its discovery has been independently confirmed by another group. [caption id=“attachment_1508581” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The berkelium target used for the synthesis (in solution). Image from Wikimedia commons.[/caption] The latest instance of the discovery of this element was made by a team at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Germany, points out a report in The Verge and the paper for this experiment was been published in Physical Review Letters. The element is the second heaviest element ever created. According to a 2010 report in the ScienceMag, the element was created by shooting an intense beam of calcium ions into a target of berkelium. Like other superheavy elements, Element 117 is also extremely unstable and has life of about 80 milliseconds. In fact scientists, were able to confirm the existence of the element by looking at the decay chain left by the element. “Making element 117 is at the absolute boundary of what is possible right now. That’s why it’s a triumph to create and identify even a few of these atoms,” says Professor David Hinde of the Australian National University, one of the authors of the paper to I Fucking Love Science. While the second study has confirmed its existence, Element 117 can join the periodic table once the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has done looking at the data and determining whether it provides sufficient evidence to prove its existence. After that is confirmed, the body will name the new element and it will be added to the periodic table.