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Element 118 Created
BuzzSkyline writes, "The heaviest element yet, Element 118, has been created in Dubna, Russia by a collaboration of researchers from Russia's Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US. They created the new element by fusing together Californium (element 98) and Calcium atoms. The achievement comes five years after the scandal-plagued retraction of an earlier claim, which was based on fabricated data, that three atoms of element 118 had been produced at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. The achievement was reported on October 9 in the journal Physical Review C (subscription needed to read more than the abstract)."
I have ten pounds of Element 119 right here...
Guys, you can't just tell an element as young as element 118 it's heavy. You'll crush its self esteem. I think the proper term these days is "in danger of becoming overweight".
Element 137 should be the max element: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untriseptium
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What's the significance of this? Is there any reason other than "cuz we could"?
that is a good element
Quick, gate it through K'Tau's sun before it's too late!
The fraudulent "discovery" at LLNL was made by a visiting Russian scientist, too. The LLNL link is too polite to say so.
but it was too fuckin heavy to drag to the lab so i let it decay.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I'll believe it when I see it!
So I guess this announcement has an element of truth about it...
[OK, shoot me now.]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I sure hope they name it something nice though. "Ununoctium", "Kurchatovium" and "Hassium" don't exactly roll off the tongue. No pun intended...
Okay... back to work.
Would it be more appropriate to say that element 118 has been successfully instantiated in a laboratory for the first time?
This is not a rhetorical question.
Is the element stable or does it decay right away?
I thought the heaviest element was Spamium which is destroying Internetium.
What? You can get the full text in PDF or PS by just scrolling all the way to the bottom of the page.
Or, this direct PDF link instead.
...thud.
The densest element so far was found in Dubya? Guess he's a member of the reality-based community after all!
Perhaps you meant 214? Or something in that range? Last I heard, the island was in the 200-300 range ( but my memeory is fuzzy )
Actually... I think Element 118 is really a big deal considering the fact that we started of with just 5
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
Do I get mod points for mentioning Bob Lazar?
Happy cows do come from California!
Yeah I've been starving them, teasing them, singing off key. Me may mah mo, me mo ma me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untriseptium#Signific ance via http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=200807 &cid=16441619
I droped a bigger element into the toilet.
That's what I read. I guess that happens if you spend too much time on slashdot.
'Gentlemen! I have created element 118, the heaviest element on earth and' *crash* 'Doc? Where are you? Doc? Dammit, that's one big hole, we really need to get those floorboards fixed.'
you seem to be deeply troubled with something . You don't like element 118 ?
Slipping shoelaces ?
Self-esteem problem? Maybe it's time you try Nu-kleeas(R), the all new "proton enhancement" solution.
Just take it 30 femtoseconds before any quantum coupling and you will see an all new you.
Ask your PhD about it today to see if the little "quantum packet" is right for you.
Warning: Side effects may include uncertainty, fission, fusion, photon emission, prolonged electron excitation, ionization, or other side effects. Tell your PhD if you are engaged in any antimatter collisions. Nu-kleeas(R) is not right for everybody.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Looks like it's time once again to dust off my old copy of X-Com.
Unfortunatly, the process for combining Californium and Calcium (which is called "Californication") has already been patented by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
I'm not a particle physicist, but from what I can see, it's saying that the problem is that some of the electrons would have to be moving faster than the speed of light. But is that really an issue? Maybe you can only have positive ions of elements above that, but they'd still be atoms of those elements. Heck, even with no electrons at all, it would still just be an extremely positive ion! At least as I understand matters. Basically, unless I'm misunderstanding or misinterpreting, 137 or 138 is the heaviest element for which a neutral atom can exist, but there should be no limit to elements for which positive ions can exist up till you reach the point where gravity starts to become a larger factor than the strong nuclear force.
Element 118 discovered not created, there is a big difference since it already exist.
In the game, it was called "Elerium 115" (after the 115th element). This has been synthesized.
As he corrected himself in a different child post (which you are free to mod up), the Island of stability doesn't start at element 118. As such, the parent post is dis-informative.
A lot of people seem to be dismissing this as without a practical use. However there is method to the seemed madness of making ever-bigger nuclei. Elements tend to be either stable or unstable - carbon is stable, uranium is not. This stability is caused by the arangement of protons/neutrons in the atoms' nucleii. I'm not exactly sure why this occurs - I'm a biologist, I'm not really meant to know - but whether or not a nulceus is stable or not follows a pattern determined by "shell-model" calculations (see here for the science bit).
So although making 3 atoms of 118 doesn't seem to amount to much, especially as it instantly falls apart, it's another step on the way to making th first of the synthetic heavy elements in a "stability island". It's thought that such a material could have strange and useful properties. Or it could be a complete waste of money and be boring as hell. I don't know, but that's the point of research at the end of the day...
What, exactly, is the point?
There are many possabilities! Elements 100 + 18... 99 + 19... 98 + 20...
The fact that it is both the heaviest element and a noble gas is amazing. An atom's "stability" is derived not from the nucleus, but from the comdition of its outer orbital Uuo's electron shells look like this perhaps [Rn] 5f14 6d10 7s2 7p6. the 7th p shell...which would say it is stable (it is a noble gas after all), however this was actually detected by it's decay due to the fact that it is unstable...? Either way, it is interesting and hopefully it can be captured in a more stable form and utilized before we get too excited about it.
If you are not part of the solution then you are part of the precipitate
Nibblonium! And it shall double as spaceship fuel, as long as the Nibblonians continue to be prolific poopers.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elerium-115
Seems far more useful
"so dense that 1 ton weighs exactly 1000 tons"
Why UNIX?
I for one welcome our first "stable" transuranic overlords, I just hope they don't fall to pieces
Interesting they were just doing a peice on US researchers trying to do this on NOVA:PBS the other night, it was quote interesting...one of the more interesting things I have seen in a while on NOVA.
t ml
You can watch the 13minute video segment here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3313/02.h
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
Somewhere in the 160s they tell me. Or maybe Scotty was referring to some clever ceramic. But it would be inifinitely cooler if the unobtanium in question were on a line of its own in a periodic table.
Now, apparently, and I have this on reliable inside information, stable transuranides are produced by "crossing the streams."
"That would be bad." Oh, yeah?
Is G.W.Bush responding to North Korea's nuclear program?
Oh, wait... it says "in Dubna".
Al Gore will claim he invented it, Bill Clinton will deny he had sex with it's Momma, Air America will become involved in some corrupt scheme to swindle it from a charity, and Hillary will use it to power her broomstick. ;-)
The stability is greater than the earlier superheavy atoms produced. This is an indication that one may be approaching the hypothesized "island of stability". I have not seen the lifetime published yet, but was told that it was "of order milliseconds".
Get our custom element naming kit and you will receive:
## iron and/or aluminum, depending on dust conditions
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
As some Slashdot posters may already know, there's a whole section in Sears where element 118 can shop.
Maybe not only deeply troubled, but triply doubled...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
That was element 114
it's not stable enough to detect except by its decay chain. It would be nice if they would work on getting over the hump to the next island of stability, so that we could bag these things in an ion trap, and measure their mass directly. OTOH, if this keeps physicists occupied and out of the bars, I'm all for it.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
What good is 118? We need to make some Unbihexium (126, Kryptonite) to defend ourselves against Zod!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbihexium
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
When we get to 121, it'll require a restructuring of the Periodic Table (like what they have to do with the lanthanides and actinides (aka the two bars on the bottom)). Can't wait! :)
I can't believe Honda sold 1 Element and now they're on their 118th sell. I guess people don't mind owning boxes as vehicles.
God spoke to me.
It not only wouldn't have gotten a laugh, it would not have been modded up to 5 for "funny" either.
I wonder where Twinkies fall in this list of "base elements." Let's face it, any food rumored to outlast the plastic wrapper it comes in if left alone for years on end has to be some pretty serious stuff. Could that be #120 (since I see "Corn-Nuts" (see above) is apparently #119). Heck even the Ghostbusters used a Twinkie as a representation for the whole of Manhattan, how many other foods can do that?
-- "You must be the change you desire to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi --
Dude, for the last time, that's not Element 119.
That's right. Everybody knows that Element 119 is Oatmealium, which is now the heaviest element. Especially if you let it dry out and harden in the bowl for a couple of days.
Little-known factoid: CornNuts is the Official Disease of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
* * * * *
Wanted: Used sig. Must be low mileage, in good condition. Will be used by my mother as an everyday "go to work" sig. Will pay top dollar for the right one.
this gives interesting insights - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3313/02.ht ml
It's thought that such a material could have strange and useful properties.
Maybe a stable transuranic element will be one of the following examples, probably something more imaginative than what I could come up with:
1. A super-thin exoskeleton sheet for interstellar craft, protecting the travelers from cosmic rays and the like.
2. A superconducting medium at room temperature.
3. The key to develop and achieve full nanotechnology capabilities.
However, these elements are created through brute force (bombardment), a linear thing, and in these matters "X" never really marks the spot. Just a hunch, but I believe that future technological advances will continue to come from more subtle and practical avenues, such as ionization of elements readily accesible in nature, or alloys (exotic ceramics and the like).
Even if it's a fruitless endeavour, it still has to be done and taken to the end. Why? Because it is there, and that's always been good enough for mankind, and will continue to be so. I'd love to still be around when Untriseptium (137) is next on the hit list, as we'll be on the very doorstep of a purported impossibility in nature. It's gonna get weird, folks!
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
I'm pretty bad at names, so I'm starting a pettion to call the new element Wunnayteenium.
It's an ancient greek word meaning "russian and american collaboration to create new element 118"
The greeks had words for pretty much everything...
I change my sig often.
Electrons fill out from the inside outward. If you try to take an electron out of an inner, lower energy orbital, then an outer electron will jump down into it. So in the long run you can't have any electrons at all.
The secondary problem is that superheavy elements already have a decay mode in which a proton captures an all-too-close inner electron and becomes a neutron, at which point it's no longer the same element.
It's the innermost electrons that have the problem? Are you sure about that? I would expect that the outermost electrons would have the farthest to travel, and would therefore need the greatest speed, so removing electrons from the outer shells would solve the problem. The outer electrons are higher energy, and I would assume that this is partly related to them having higher velocity. But I can see arguments for the other way around too, and I don't know which is correct.
I agree that electron capture is another interesting issue here. And it is curious that 137 is the nearest whole number to the inverse of the fine structure constant.
You could equally well say that a particle cannot have more kinetic energy than m*c^2/2 because that's the classical kinetic energy at speed c (in reality, we are accelerating particles to an energy of more than 100000*m*c^2).
If you get close to the speed of light you actually have to do your calculations relativistically, and then there will be no limit to the atomic number (with a simple Dirac equation & point charge model).
I would care more about the mean lifetime of a heavy nucleus. Due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the product of the lifetime and the energy uncertainty cannot be below h/(4*PI) = 5.3 * 10^(-35). If you increase the atomic number, as the mean lifetime decreases, at some point the energy uncertainty will be of the same size as the decay energies. Then I think we should stop calling the thing nucleus or atom and instead call it simply a collision.
In the periodic spiral of elements (http://mardeg.sitesled.com/elementspiral.html) will Naquada be 119 - an alkali metal, or 120 - an alkaline earth metal?
Does this alter or affect anything recently said in a NOVA SCIENCE NOW episode?3 /02.html">http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/ 3313/02.html</A>
("Island of Stability")
<A HREF="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/331
It's not just that it has gravitas, it's that it has gravitas without having stability. Kind of like Rush Limbaugh when he's off his meds...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You're thinking of electrons as little planet-like objects orbiting the nucleus. Our current best understanding is that they don't follow orbits exactly, so much as they occupy orbitals (volumes of space where you have 90%+ confidence that the electron can be found inside.) The problem with the superlarge nucleii is that for electrons in the innermost shell to avoid absorption, they need to be moving quickly... in the case of elements higher than atomic number 137, faster than the speed of light.)
Procrastination Man strikes again!
Any physicists out there who can comment on how the synthesis of this new element affects the next island of stability for heavy elements??
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
What's crazy is that the U.S. government is spending Billions funding research that after years creates 3 atoms of something that we'll never be able to use. I know, the intent is to keep our nuclear physicists employed so they can check out our stockpile every once in a while ... but seriously, why not put them to better use? Get them to find an alternative to middle eastern oil maybe? Oh yeah, then we'd have nobody to bomb.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
The next element will be 119 and will be place in the same group as Lithium. I'd call it dilithium...
Mila Jovovich stuffing hot element 119 down her pants! YES!
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
X-COM UFO rocks. Have you seen UFO: Aftershock? It's quite possibly as good as X-COM UFO itself.
How about calling it "Nobelievium"? Chemical formula Bs.
What's next ... the Omega molecule???
Better warn Starfleet!!!
What does the Govenator have to say about unions between Californium and Calcium?
> "You're thinking of electrons as little planet-like objects orbiting the nucleus."
:)
No. I am a layman, but I do understand at least some of the implications of the double-slit experiments and the creation of Bose-Einstein condensates. My mental image of electrons around a nucleus is more like clouds blurring and spreading to form a fuzzy, translucent shell. Which is probably also a flawed model, but closer, I think, than the planet-model. I admit that it was some fairly Newtonian thinking that led me to speculate that higher-energy orbits might be related to higher velocity, but nothing quite as simple as you suggest. Anyway, thanks for the clarification. If I weren't already a participant in this thread, I'd give you some "informative" mod points.
Of course, you've left me with some new questions, but I suspect that there are better places than slashdot for me to go for answers.
cheers
NAQUADAH is the proper name ! Scentist, kree !
...for them to create naquadah. We need to be able to make stargates, naquadah reactors, and hyperdrives!
Stability is relative. Just like everything else in science. Carbon 13 is relatively unstable compared to Carbon 12. Carbon 13 is however relatively stable compared to the vast majority of super heavy elements. The big fat number of neutrons has a whopping lot of importance to stability, and most researchers are just making a fruit punch of elements hoping for the best.
The major reason why people study this is to get their PhD's. Lots of people will throw money at you if you say "I DISCOVERED SOMETHING BRAND NEW"