Elements 114 and 116 Named Livermorium and Flerovium

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Elements 114 and 116 get their official names, livermorium and flerovium

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) decided last Thursday, December 1, to allow chemical elements 114 and 116 to be named livermorium and flerovrium. The decision was made after the proposal was discussed in forum for 5 months. It wasn't until this June that the elements were even allowed to be included in the Periodic Table. However, they are now an integrated part of the super-heavy element class, also known as Transuranium (beyond Uranium) elements. These are chemicals that cannot exist in their primary configuration due to built-in instability. As such, they rapidly decay into lesser, more stable elements. For this reason, they are extremely difficult to study or observe in detail. Flerovium was named in honor of Russian scientist Georgiy Flerov and the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, while livermorium was named for the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, LiveScience reports.