UnNews:Scientists recall all element names
Saturday, June 18, 2016
Zürich, Switzerland: Yesterday, conservative elements (in a politically-motivated coup) suddenly and unexpectedly took over the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and began a major overhaul of the periodic table by rescinding every single formally designated chemical element name. For the time being, each of the 118 known elements will be referred to solely by a computer-generated systematic name and symbol constructed entirely from that element's atomic number.
Earlier this week, the proposed official naming of the four remaining elements without official names ("nihonium", "moscovium", "tennessine", and "oganesson") caused such world-wide geopolitical outrage that the IUPAC immediately reversed itself, and in a total surprise, subsequently threw out all of the accumulated cruft and nonsense built up by many centuries of inconsistent chemical nomenclature and decided to start all over again from square one (beginning with "unium", formerly known as "hydrogen").
Most significantly affected are the nations, educational institutions, planets, gods, and individual scientists which have been unknowingly swindled by having previously paid huge sums of money to a completely unofficial "Element Naming Registry", a scam set up by unscrupulous internet pirates in 1997 which went bust this week and closed operations after having sold out all known remaining elements, sometimes multiple times to multiple parties.
Uranus was the angriest of the planets taken in by the proud notion of having a whole element named after them. Only hours ago, they were looking up "uranium" on Earth's Wikipedia for the umpteenth time and shockingly discovered "ennbium (Eb)" (the pseudo-Latin-Greek designation for element 92) in its place. "Ennbium??? What the hell's that?!?", exclaimed ethnic Uranians everywhere (mostly in the obscure Uranic language, of course).
To forestall an anticipated unscientific free-for-all, IUPAC is currently laying the ground-work for sensible and consistent element nomenclature, an intricate process which is expected to be cautiously engaged in for the remainder of the third millennium. In the mean time, interested political entities and private individual scientists are encouraged to donate huge sums of money to IUPAC in order to surreptitiously influence IUPAC members in the newfound hope of having their ultimate dreams finally realized by having an element officially named for them or their loved ones, this time for real.