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Japan Claims Heaviest-Ever Element

Posted by timothy on from the population-density dept.

mOoZik writes "According to People's Daily Online, Japanese scientists claim to have created a new element, whose atomic number is 113, by bombarding a Bismuth atom target with 2.5 trillion zinc atoms per second for 80 days. The claim, as that of Russian and American scientists that claimed to have created elements 113 and 115 in February, remains to be officially confirmed."

3 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Island of Stability by Schezar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The ultimate goal is reaching a theoretical Island of Stability.

    This is a hypothesized region farther down on the peiodic table where extremely heavy elements become stable and long-lasting, albeit with interesting properties due to the large number of sub-elements of which they're comprised.

    --
    GeekNights!
    Late Night Radio for Geeks!
  2. Whoah! by vijaya_chandra · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... the cyclotron bombarded a bismuth atom target with 2.5 trillion zinc atoms per second for 80 days, the scientist said, the team found the new element, which disintegrated in only 0.3 millisecond.

    That's 80*24*60*60 * 2.5 * 10^10 (bc says 1.728 * 10^17, which isn't quite comparable to the avogadro or whatever number, but is still quite impressive) atoms to get this new element that disintegrated in 0.0003 seconds

    and here I am, cursing myself and the world if I have to rewrite a stupid, tiny class.

  3. Re:I hope I hope I hope by JabberWokky · · Score: 1, Interesting
    I first heard about it from Feynman who was, I think, the person who found the limit. It has to do with positions of the electrons or something to do with orbitals. Once there are a certain number of electrons, a value goes to zero or infinity.

    A bit of Googling doesn't bring it up...

    Ah! I remember - something about the electrons having to exceed c past a certain shell. Damned if I can remember the whole thing or the number. 117? 147? 217? Something like that. Turns out the number is one of the classic constants (a minor one) and pops up in interesting places.

    It's one of those facts that is interesting but not terribly useful unless that is your field of research.

    --
    Evan "Not a physicist. My SO is a quantum chemist, though"

    --
    "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien