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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'."
If elements 113 and 115 were created by these scientists, what prevented them from creating 114? Was it simply that they could not create a stable element with the correct atomic weight? I am no atomic scientist, but if I could create elements with atomic weights of 113 and 115, it wouldn't be to long before I could create the perfect combination to reach 114.
I guess I should just be thankful for our scientific community.
I know I am missing a lot of the fine mechanics here, but is it the pursuit of the correct combination that is so hard? Or is it just minor alterations to existing elements?
Does element 114 already exist?
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One would expect the sciences to continue to advance quickly. After all, science progresses via an open source model.
:-) Neither does proprietary development of software, for the same reasons!
Proprietary development of new physics doesn't advance very rapidly.
If Microsoft "owned" 95% of physics, we'd still be stuck on Newtonian mechanics, because only a small handful of physicists would be allowed to read physics books...and they wouldn't be the really smart physicists either.
I hope that after I die the one word people use to describe me is "resurrected."
I just read this on CNN.com. Singer/actress Jennifer Lopez has died in a car crash on her way to her music studio. More details as they come in.
nah, unpentium would be 15, which is phosphorus. Phosphorus starts on fire when exposed to air, and anyone who has a palamino knows the similarities. Remove the heatsink and phrooomph!
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