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Meet 115, the Newest Element on the Periodic Table
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If you've learned all the elements from actinium to zirconium, it's time to head back to the periodic table, where there's a new, extremely heavy element in town.
The new element doesn't have an official name yet, so scientists are calling it ununpentium, based on the Latin and Greek words for its atomic number, 115. (Related: Read a feature on element hunters in National Geographic magazine.)
In case you forgot your high school chemistry, here's a quick refresher: An element's atomic number is the number of protons it contains in its nucleus.
The heaviest element in nature is uranium, which has 92 protons. But heavier elements-which have more protons in their nucleus-can be created through nuclear fusion. (Related: Learn how to make an element.)
The man-made 115 was first created by Russian scientists in Dubna about ten years ago. This week, chemists at Lund University in Sweden announced that they had replicated the Russian study at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Germany.
[link to news.nationalgeographic.com]
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