[Intro Music]

Hello, and welcome back for another episode of Scishow Breaking News: Today, I bring you news about one terrible thing that officially does not exist and two awesome things that officially do.

First, I'm sure you've heard about this bizarre string of grotesque crimes in the news lately, like the man in Miami who ate that other guy's face, and another guy, in Maryland, who reportedly turned himself in for killing a guy and eating his heart and then part of his brain. These horrifying stories have lead some people to suggest that maybe some kind of zombie epidemic is under way.

The Huffington Post --oh god, stop calling yourselves journalists-- even went so far as to call up the Center for Disease control to get their take. The verdict according to CDC spokesman David Daigle --and I'm quoting here-- "CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would re-animate the dead or one that would present zombie-like symptoms". So, yay.

But still, you've got to ask, who would perpetuate an idea like this so effectively that it would basically start a public panic? How about the Centers for Disease Control! Since last year the CDC has been running a PR campaign to raise awareness about disaster preparedness and the theme is --you guessed it-- the zombie apocalypse.

This is one of their actual posters. They even published a graphic novel with the somber title "Zombie Pandemic". So don't just blame the media for zombie hysteria, you can blame the US government, too. The idea here, I think, being that if you're prepared for a zombie apocalypse, you're prepared for just about any other disaster.

Now, in news pertaining to actual science, I'm psyched to tell you that two new elements have officially been added to the periodic table. Please join me in welcoming Flerovium, other wise known as number one-one-four, and Livermorium, one-one-six. They're both super-heavy synthetic elements and one actually decays into the other.

Physicists first created Livermorium by colliding Calcium ions with twenty protons into atoms of Curium which have ninety-six protons, making one huge atom with a hundred and sixteen protons. Livermorium then decays almost instantly into Flerovium with one hundred and fourteen protons.

The new elements were named after the labs that collaborated to create them, Russia's Flyorov laboratory of nuclear reactions, named for physicist Georgy Flyorov, and the Lawrence Liverpool laboratory in California.

So, why isn't there a one-one-three? Why did we skip over them? Well, it was actually probably synthesized in 2003 by the same two labs, and given the temporary name, Ununtrium. By the way, basically, it means one-one-three-um. Clever people, so good at naming things. But, the organization that designates new elements, The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, is awaiting confirmation of its existence before going and giving it an official name.

Thanks for watching this episode of Scishow Breaking News. We'll be on facebook, or twitter, or in the YouTube comments below and if you want to keep getting smarter with us here on Scishow, you can go to youtube.com/scishow and subscribe.

[Outro Music]