It's All About the Ununpentium

spitefulcrow writes "The New York Times is reporting that elements 113 and 115 have been created by a joint team of Russian and American scientists. The temporary names are ununtrium and ununpentium until the experiment has been duplicated and verified in another lab. According to the article, speculation has been made that 'Rather than being round, nuclei in that region and beyond could contain bubbles and have strange doughnut-like shapes'."

Comments

Google Link

[jeffkjo1]

For the tin-foil hat impaired, here is a de-register-it-ized link: The Story

Re:ooooh..me first

[GMC-jimmy]

NYTimes Google Partner Link

Re:Element 114

[e6003]

The elements in this area of the periodic table are all highly radioactive. They are INCREDIBLY unstable - we're talking half lives of seconds or less and production scales of maybe one atom a week. The theory is rather complex, but basically the binding energies of these super-heavy nucleii aren't enough to hold them togetehr, AIUI. That said, the same theory predicts a "sea of stability" at even larger atomic numbers (around 130 IIRC). That's not to say that such elements would be non-radioactive but they may be stable enough to isolate in sufficient quantities to do "normal" chemistry experiments on. Element 114 may not be stable enough even to detect in these minute levels.

(e6003 - chemist and part-time geek).

Re:What's the point ?

[Sparr0]

Well, one possible benefit would be finding a heavy element that decays in some unusual and useful way, possibly an easier way to start/stop a fission process (random idea, no feasibility assumed).

Re:About the *stupid* name...

[sbennett]

ununpentium is Latin for "115"

Not quite. Essentially, it's a name made up out of the digits that make the number. So, 1 is 'un', two is 'bi', three 'tri', four 'quad' five 'pent', six 'hex', seven 'sept', eight 'oct', and nine I can't remember; it's probably 'non'. Then you stick 'ium' on the end, because all element names have to end in 'ium'. Stick '115' in there, and you get ununpentium. The resemblance to the Intel chip is (almost) pure coincidence.

Re:Sorry, couldn't resist...

[miketang16]

To be honest, I think they name them with Latin, where "un" = one, and "pent" = five, hence one-one-five (115).

Re:Not the first doughnut element

[MillionthMonkey]

Everyone seems surprised that nuclei are not always spheres. Lopsidedness is common in nuclei. O-16, for example, has a complete set of filled proton and neutron shells (making it the nuclear equivalent of a noble gas like the helium nucleus). If you add another neutron to make O-17, the neutron fills the first available orbital (an s-orbital) in the next, empty shell. This means it will tend to zig zag back and forth in a little straight line through the center of the nucleus. Since the other particles are always attracted to it and moving toward wherever it is, the rest of the nucleus gets distended from a round sphere and stretched in the direction of the neutron's motion. O-18 is even more football-shaped because there are two neutrons in that s-orbital now. Of course, in the case of s-orbitals there is little angular momentum to use as a reference, so the axis is indeterminate and it doesn't make any sense to say the football is "pointing" in any given direction.
But many nuclei are distended by orbitals with definite angular momentum, and many are distended into shapes that are not footballs. Disks are common. The nuclei of heavy elements like uranium are shaped like light bulbs, with a definite axis. The "bulge" in the bulb sloshes back and forth along the main axis, onto each side of the center of mass.

Re:What's the point ?

[autophile]

They create heavy elements, which are so unstable that they decay as quickly as they were created.

So I'm wondering - what's the point ?

Elements 83 (bismuth) and under have one or more stable isotopes, and one or more unstable isotopes. So, for example, hydrogen (element 1) is stable, but deuterium (H-2) and tritium (H-3) are not. Nevertheless, these unstable isotopes are useful. Deuterium is used in nuclear medicine, in heavy water for nuclear reactors, and in fusion reactions. So...

Myth: Unstable isotopes are useless.
Myth Busted!

Past element 83, there are no stable isotopes. There's a pretty good chart showing the stable and unstable isotopes here. There's also an interactive one, color-coded for lifetimes, here. The half-life of these elements decreases from millenia to microseconds. However...

It's been known for decades that certain numbers of protons are "magic" in that they "pack together" in a very stable manner. Same thing with neutrons. As we approach the next "magic" numbers, the half-lives of the elements should start going back up. And they do.

In this latest experiment, the particular isotope of element 113 *may* have lasted for as long as 1.2 seconds. That's a long time for such a heavy element. Elements under 113 last for much less time, so that shows that we may be reaching the region of stability.

The region of stability is apparently close by, and *stable* superheavy elements will assuredly have useful properties.

And that's why nuclear chemists continue to search for heavier and heavier artificial elements. Because one day one of them will last for more than a few seconds. And then one day, one of them will last forever. Instant revolution in materials science.

Myth: There's no point searching for superheavy elements.
Myth Busted!

--Rob