The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry last week officially confirmed the discovery of elements 113, 115, 117 and 118. And with the addition of these four new super-heavy elements, the periodic table is all set to get a little bit longer.

“Probably the only other place where they might exist in a short period of time could be a supernova, where you have so much energy and so many particles that are really heavily concentrated”, said Dawn Shaughnessy, the principal investigator for the Heavy Element Group at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which had a hand in three of these discoveries.

The nuclei of the atoms of the new super-heavy elements is enormous, and thus their name. Citing an example, scientists say element 118 is the heaviest element to date, with 118 protons alongside 176 neutrons. It can take years together to prepare elements of this size in specialized laboratories. These are not routinely found in nature either.

Super-heavy elements are also highly unstable, existing for just a fraction of a second before they begin to decay.

Shaughnessy said it is very difficult to smash two things together and get them to stick. There is so much positive charge that they want to repel each other, he said.