Element 110 Now Darmstadtium

photoblur writes "It's time to update your periodic table of the elements! Element 110 has been officially named 'darmstadtium' (Ds), after the GSI lab in Darmstadt, Germany. The GSI lab has also been officially recognized for discovering element 111."

Comments

Re:Name of Element 111

[big_O_of_n!]

I was sort of hoping they'd never get around to giving 111 an official name. Unununium (Uuu) is just too good to get rid of.

Re:Just Wondering

[overbyj]

You do reach a point where the nuclear binding force requirement is too much to hold all the protons and neutrons together in the nucleus. The nuclear binding force is necessary to overcome the repulsions of the individual protons in the nucleus. In essence, the neutrons act as mini-buffers between all the positively charged protons but after a certain number, the repulsive forces become greater than the nuclear binding energy. This energy requirement is why as you move from "lighter" radioactive elements such as uranium to darmstadtium, the half-lives decrease exponentially. Uranium isotopes have half-lives measured in billions of years while I suspect the half-life of element 110 is measured in milliseconds to microseconds. The nuclear binding energy requirement is too great to make a long-living stable nucleus.

Re:Name of Element 111

[rdslater596]

How bout
"Nobodybutfiziksgeekscareanymoreium"

Seriously though, it is important in our understanding of both heavy nuclei physics and stellar astrophysics. That knowledge will not have an immediate benifit that most people can see. Eventaully that understanding will lead to some helpful devices and ideas that most people will go "ah-hah!" about. But inbetween breakthroughs we are inching along to set ourselves up for the next a-hah! moment.

As an example Americium (element 95--artifcially produced) is used often in smoke detectors. Back in the 30s and 40s the same argument could have been made, whats the point of all these artificial elelments?--but eventually "something" came out of it.

But more intangible furthering of knowledge is the real goal. Eventually there is some hope (and theory) that stable elements will be produced in the 115-120 atomic number range. Its hard to say exactly what hard "benefit" will come--maybe nothing, maybe something exceiting. They call it "re"-search for a reason! For now we will have to be content that we know more than we did before.

So you could say we are doing just because its there--but we are learning from it as well.