Cracks in the periodic table.

The article discusses the periodic table of chemical elements. The author argues that the table may be losing its explanatory and predictive power despite the discovery of element 117, which filled the last remaining gap in the periodic table. Topics include the creation of the periodic table in the 1860s by Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev, who left several spaces in the table believing chemists would discover more elements, the publication of more than 1000 versions of the periodic table, nuclear physicists' synthesis of new elements beginning with technetium in 1937, and research by Yuri Oganessian of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions (FLNR) in Dubna, Russia and colleagues that led to the creation of element 117.