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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."
I think i'll go play a game of half life to celebrate.:p
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
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.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.