Naming new elements is a very complex process. Political interests, disputes over discoveries, ego clashes... we've seen it all. However, any definitive decision rests with the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, also known as IUPAC. Last Wednesday, IUPAC confirmed the names of the four elements that still had to be formally identified: Nihonium, Moscovium, Tennessine, and Oganesson.
A History of Element Name Disputes
The periodic table even served as a battlefield for Soviet and American scientists in the 1960s. The so-called "War of the Trans-Fermium Elements" reveals that the selection of names focused on elements 104-108 was a true scandal, and it took more than thirty years to resolve. The disputes were reflected directly in the periodic table, and I personally have had copies with Kurchatovium and Rutherfordium (the latter was the chosen one for element 104). The political context has changed, but competition between laboratories and countries has not. The first groups to synthesize an element claim the right to designate its name, although that is not always fulfilled. In fact, the final word on the matter belongs to IUPAC, which, after "many years", decided to remove the last four 'generic names' from the periodic table in favor of definitive names.
The New Elements and Their Names
Why "after many years"? Because the synthesis of these elements took place between 2002 and 2010, but IUPAC took more than half a decade to recognize each discovery. That said, let's make room for Nihonium (element 113), Moscovium (element 115), Tennessine (element 117), and Oganesson (element 118). The first report on Nihonium (Nihon, Japan) emerged in 2003 through a combined effort between Russian and American scientists, but IUPAC leaned towards the work done by the Japanese RIKEN institute in July 2004. The same Russian-American team was involved with Moscovium (Moscow), Tennessine (for the state of Tennessee), and Oganesson (for Professor Yuri Oganessian). The designation of Oganesson is the second exception that IUPAC makes in allowing a naming based on a living person (the first was Seaborgium in 1997, for Glenn Seaborg).
Properties of the New Elements
What can we say about the elements themselves? Six isotopes of Nihonium are known, four of Moscovium, two of Tennessine, and only one of Oganesson. As expected, none of them is stable, and their half-lives are quite short. For example, Nihonium-286 has a half-life of 19.6 seconds, while at the other extreme, Nihonium-278 marks 370 microseconds. The first simulations of Oganesson painted it as a noble gas, but now all these elements would be in a solid phase (Nihonium, Moscovium and Tennessine fit into the category of "post-transition metals"). Melting points range between 350 and 550 degrees Celsius (I don't have the exact data for Oganesson). I imagine scientists will try to confirm more details about the elements in the future, and of course, aim their cannons at elements 119 and 120.
