New Chemical Elements Honor Livermore Lab and Russia’s Flerov Lab

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Moscovium is out and livermorium is in as the name of two new super heavy elements that will soon be added to chemistry’s periodic table. Along with flerovium, or element 114, livermorium, element 116, is a highly unstable, synthesized Transuranium element.

The two new elements must undergo a five-month public comment period overseen by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry before being added to the table, officials said this week. Once that period is over, livermorium and flerovium will join three other super heavy elements that were added early last month darmstadtium (Ds), roentgenium (Rg), and copernicium (Cn).

Livermorium, named in honor of California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will use the symbol Lv, while flerovium will have the symbol Fl. Both elements were synthesized more than 10 years ago at Russia’s Joint Institute for Nuclear Research outside Moscow by a joint team of Russian scientists and researchers from the Livermore lab. The instability of the elements made it extremely difficult to confirm their existence, however, making their journey to inclusion on the periodic table a long one.

Livermorium, formerly known as ununhexium, was originally going to be named moscovium in a nod to the Russian capital, but it seems the Livermore contingent won out. Flerovium, once temporarily known as ununquadium, honors both Russian physicist Georgiy Flerov (1913-1990) and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research’s Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions where it was synthesized.

“Proposing these names for the elements honors not only the individual contributions of scientists from these laboratories to the fields of nuclear science, heavy-element research, and super-heavy-element research, but also the phenomenal cooperation and collaboration that has occurred between scientists at these two locations,” said Bill Goldstein, associate director of Lawrence Livermore National Labs’ Physical and Life Sciences Directorate, in a statement.

Other synthesized Transuranium elements that are positioned in the slots for elements 113, 115, 117, and 118 have also been observed, but lack enough evidence to begin the process of inclusion in the period table. For example, scientists have to date only observed six atoms of ununseptium, the temporary name for element 117.