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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."
Ununnilium isn't good enough for them? Sir Ununnil must be rolling over in his grave.
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Element: WOMAN
Symbol: Wo
Atomic Weight: 120 +/-
Physical Properties: Generally round in form. Boils at nothing and may freeze anytime. Melts whenever treated properly. Very bitter if not used well.
Chemical Properties: Very active. Possesses strong affinity to gold, silver, platinum, and precious stones. Violent when left alone. Able to absorb great amount of exotic food. Turns slightly green when placed beside a better specimen. Ages rapidly.
Usage: Highly ornamental. An extremely good catalyst for disintegration of wealth. Probably the most powerful income reducing agent known.
Caution: Highly explosive in inexperienced hands.
It's already on the webelements.com page, with some interesting info on the chemical makeup.
Chemical element 110, which was discovered in 1994, will finally get a name tomorrow.
A committee will vote at this weekend's General Assembly of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) in Ottawa, Canada. It is expected to approve the element's informal moniker, 'darmstadtium', and give it the chemical symbol Ds. The title honours the Laboratory for Heavy Ion Research (called GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany, where the substance was first made.
The natural elements run out at number 92, uranium. Several more have been made artificially since 1939, when researchers at the University of California at Berkeley bombarded uranium with a beam of neutrons to create element 93, which they called neptunium.
Firing subatomic particles at heavy atoms became the preferred method of making new elements. The basic aim is to add more protons to the atomic nuclei - an element is defined by the number of protons its atoms contain. Some new elements were also detected in the fallout from nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s.
Element-making soon became a race. In the 1960s and 1970s the two main players were a Soviet group at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna and a team spanning the University of California and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The discoverers of a new element generally win the right to name it, although the new name still has to receive IUPAC approval.
The natural elements run out around
number 92
But disputes over claimed sightings of new elements have led to acrimonious and nationalistic battles over naming. These elements decay quickly, and are often made only a few atoms at a time - so it can be hard to gather convincing evidence.
In 1987 IUPAC was forced to assess priority claims over all the new elements from 104 to 107. Then in 1993 a new controversy erupted when the Berkeley team wanted to name element 106 after nuclear-chemistry pioneer Glenn Seaborg. IUPAC insisted at first that 'seaborgium' broke the rules, because Seaborg was still alive at that time. It relented only after the American Chemical Society threatened rebellion.
No one disputes GSI's claim to element 110. There was, however, some relief when the German results, produced by fusing lead and nickel nuclei, were confirmed last June at Berkeley using the same process1. Element-hunters have been more cautious since a Berkeley team was forced to retract unreproducible data published in support of a reported 1999 creation of element 118.
1) What does this mean exactly?
It means that the first 92 elements can be found naturally occurring, but that after 92 (the trans-uranic elements) have to be produced in a laboratory or under artifical conditions if you want useful amounts.
2) Is it not possible for us to discover other natural elements?
If by discover, you mean create then yes. Since an element is definied by the number of (integer >0) protons, any new elements created must have an atomic number >92.
3) Is it inconceivable that our "new" elements could also be produced under similar conditions in nature?
Not inconceivable. It has been verified that minutes amounts of trans-uranic elements have been found in nature. But given that these lements have a very short life time (before they decay into other elements), you'd have to be around immediately after their formation to detect them in nature. Since their creation requires high amounts of energy, super nova, intense gamma radiation near black holes, etc, are the sort of environments where you might find naturally ocurring trans-uranic elements (remembering too that you basically need to smash into heavy elements to get the trans-uranic ones, the very heavy ones need to be present to). Such environments are are rare and not conducive to observation. Given that the elements in the universe are hydrogen, helium and minor traces short-lived trans-uranic are not going to be found in nature in any partical sense.
4) Have all of these new elements only existed in very small quantities for short periods of time, under controlled conditions?
Yes. There are some theories that there would be an island of stability around element 120+. Scientists are working to create a stable trans-uranic element, and I for one welcome our trans-uranic overlords and would like to remind them that being primarily made of stable isotopes I can be useful in rounding up other carbon based elemental life forms to slave in their radioactive piles.
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
001 Earth
010 Wind
011 Fire
100 Water
101 ?
110 Darmstadtium
Please can anyone fill in the gap. What's the element 101?
Karma: Bad due to google bombing - Robert Watkins woz 'ere.
Indeed. It's an old joke in Dutch to say "I'm expecting a fax from Darmstadt" to excuse yourself to go for a shit...
Sentimentality is merely the Bank Holiday of cynicism.
- Oscar Wilde