Slashdot Mirror
Chemical Element 110 To Be Named
An anonymous reader writes "According to Nature Magazine, chemists will vote in Ottawa, Canada this week, and are expected to approve the chemical element 110's informal moniker, 'darmstadtium', and give it the chemical symbol Ds. The title honors the Laboratory for Heavy Ion Research (called GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany, where the substance was first made. It seems that 'disputes over claimed sightings of new elements have [previously] led to acrimonious and nationalistic battles over naming', but not in this case."
All existing naturally ocurring heavy elements are the result of ancient supernovae. It is quite possible that these new elements already exist around other supernovae, which whilst catastropic, are definitely natural. It is just that none was around when the earth coalesced.
Even if they did, they would be so unstable (with a half time to be measured in nanoseconds) that they would fall apart immediately. That's (as being told me by my school Science teacher) also the distinction between natural and nonnatural elements. The ones that are stable exist for a while (at least a second or so) and are natural and the rest has an unstable nucleus and thus isnt natural (ie can only be made in a lab).
Alan Perlis once said: "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing"
I know this is offtopic but, this is the most beautiful periodic table.
On the other hand we Germans have no problems with people giggling about Uranus.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
It's not D. It's Ds.
Nobody gets Nitrogen (N) mixed up with Niobium (Nb) or Nickel (Ni), so I don't see this as being a problem.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban