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  • NEWS FEATURE

The battle behind the periodic table’s latest additions

Four new elements were added in 2015 with great fanfare — but some researchers complain the announcement was premature.
  1. Edwin Cartlidge

    1. Edwin Cartlidge is a reporter in Rome.

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Illustration by Karol Banach

The mood at Bäckaskog Castle in southern Sweden should have been upbeat when chemists and physicists gathered there for a symposium in May 2016. The meeting, sponsored by the Nobel Foundation, offered researchers a chance to take stock of global efforts to probe the limits of nuclear science, and to celebrate four new elements that they had added to the periodic table a few months earlier. The names of the elements were due to be announced within days, a huge honour for the researchers and countries responsible for the discoveries.

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Nature 558, 175-176 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05371-y

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