The periodic table is about to get something new -- "Copernicum".  Element 112 (copernicum), originally discovered in 1996 by a group led by Sigurd Hofmann at the Centre for Heavy Ion Research (GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany, will be added to official periodic tables in the next couple weeks after official recognition by the The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.

Previously, copernicum could be found in many science texts under the name "Ununbium", at the same spot (112), right next to roentgenium.  That means that it has 112 protons -- 20 more than uranium, the heaviest naturally occurring element.

The discovery and verification of Copernicum was a compelling tale.  It began in 1996 when Hoffman's team was firing zinc atoms into pieces of lead looking for new elements.  Radioactive elements emit particles with distinct energies, providing researchers with means to positively identify them.

Hoffman's team detected a sequence of alpha particle emissions (alpha particles consist of two protons and two neutrons) coming from one of the resulting atoms.  After five emissions, a sixth emission yielded an alpha particle with the same energy as nobelium, element 102.  This led the researchers to conclude that they had created an element with 112 protons (102+2+2+2+2+2=112).

The team also seemingly discovered a second set of collision data that appeared to be a second 112 proton atom.  However, there were problems with the data.  The data for the first-detected atom did not match element 104, rutherfordium, for the second to last decay's energy.  Further, the second set of data didn't match up to the first one at all.

Primarily on the grounds of the second problem, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) rejected Hoffman's bid to recognize the element.

After the reject the researchers discovered why the second observed atom was so problematic -- because it was (allegedly) "spuriously created" by Victor Ninov, a researcher working on the project at the time.  There was no evidence of the decay chain in the data files for the project; the researchers concluded that Ninov made it up, and requested a retraction of the 1996 study.

Soon after, Ninov was caught falsifying data while working on a project that was trying to find element 118 in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California.

Undeterred by the stunning betrayal, Hoffman's team marched ahead, rerunning the test.  However, a second bid for verification in 2003 was tossed by IUPAC.  IUPAC argued that the decay chain was different to the first and could not be repeated.

The next year a team led by Kosuke Morita at the RIKEN superheavy element laboratory in Wako, Japan discovered the reason for the differences.  The RIKEN team created two carefully documented 112-proton atoms and discovered that the new element could follow two different alpha decay paths.

Some argue that IUPAC is too slow at recognizing newly discovered elements (the reason for the temporary names that typically begin with a U).  However, misconduct like Ninov's justifies the thoroughness of the validation process, says Paul Karol of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who chaired the IUPAC panel.  He states, "We are told that we are too slow, but this experience also gives us fuel for maintaining that position."

In the late 1990s, another important discovery relating to copernicum was made.  Yuri Oganessian at the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia reported creating a "heavy" 112-proton atom with more neutrons than the 165 found in Hoffman's atom.  While the results were unable to be replicated at the LBNL, later Oganessian's team made more heavy 112 atoms that were independently confirmed. 

Hoffman's atom breaks down within fractions of a millisecond, but Oganessian's "heavy" copernicum lasts for 4 seconds, the time it takes to reach its first half-life.  That allowed copernicum's boiling point (80 °C) to be measured.

The hunt for new elements will not stop with copernicum.  It may be some time before another element is approved -- the last one to be approved before copernicum was roentgenium, which was confirmed by IUPAC in 2004, six years ago.  Still the hunt will continue, even if its a slow one.  Describes Hoffman, "The aim is to find the end of the periodic table."