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Modern alchemy 现代炼金术 Turning a line. 进入新的一行。 The race to extend the periodic table continues. 扩展元素周期表的比赛仍在继续。 ONE of the first inklings that chemistry has an underlying pattern was the discovery, earlyin the 19th century, of lithium, sodium and potassium-known collectively as the alkali metals.Though different from each other they have strangely similar properties. This was one of theobservations that led a German chemist called Johann Debereiner to wonder if all chemicalelements came in families. 早在19世纪，人们对化学潜在规律已有模糊认知之时，锂、钠、钾被发现，它们同被称为碱金属。虽然并不相同，它们却有着不可思议的相似性质。正是这项发现，使德国化学家Johann Debereiner产生怀疑，是否所有的化学元素都是成族出现的。 It took decades to tease out the truth of Debereiner s conjecture, and thus to constructthe periodic table-in which the alkali metals form the first column. And it took decadesmore to explain why the table works . But it is a fitting tribute to Debereiner s insight that, if allgoes well, some time in the next few months will bring the creation of a new alkali metal,element number 119, by his countryman Christoph Dullmann of the GSI Helmholtz Centrefor Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt. With that addition the table will do something whichhas never happened before. It will grow a new row. | 
