Now Serving Nos. 114 and 116...

Scientists at two laboratories recently announced the discovery of two new elements with atomic numbers 114 and 116. Until they're officially named, that's what they'll go by. Or you could call them "ununquadium" and "ununhexium," which are the Latinized forms of "114-ium" and "116-ium," respectively.

Yeah, sometimes scientists are weird.

The atomic numbers refer to the number of protons in an atom's nucleus, and that shows us where it goes on the periodic table. The simplest element, for example, is hydrogen and its atomic number is 1 because it has one proton in its nucleus. Carbon, an element essential to life as we know it, has six protons in its nucleus and so its atomic number is 6.

Although the scientists are said to have "discovered" the new elements, they have existed before. It's just that they deteriorate so rapidly -- the small quantities made in laboratories disappear in less than a second -- that they don't hang around long enough to be observed. The same is true of any element so far discovered with an atomic number above 94, and some of those with smaller numbers don't occur on their own, but only show up when other elements decay. Before this announcement, the largest atomic number confirmed was copernicium at 112, which was added to the periodic table in 2009.

Elements up to no. 118 (ununoctium) have been theorized, but so far only 114 and 116 of that group have been created in detectable quantities and the rest are still just theoretical.  So that's where 115 (ununpentium) is, in case you thought scientists couldn't count.

As one of the scientists who's on the official committee that reviews and recognizes these things pointed out, 2011 is the 100th anniversary of Marie Curie's Nobel Prize for the discovery of radium (88) and polonium (84). One of the elements used to make 116 was, in fact, curium (96), the element discovered in 1944 and named after her. The new 116 was created when scientists slammed curium with calcium in a particle accelerator.