Long-lived Super Heavy Element Created

treeves writes "Radioactive nuclei that hang around for a mere half-minute before falling apart hardly seem stable. Yet compared with the fleeting lifetimes of their superheavy atomic neighbors, the roughly 30-second period that transpired from creation to disintegration of four atoms of a newly discovered isotope of element 108 qualifies those atoms as rock solid. Theoretical physicists predicted years ago that some nuclei of elements much more massive than uranium should survive for a relatively long time — possibly long enough to probe their chemical properties — if they could be synthesized. On the chart of nuclides, theoreticians pinpointed a region with coordinates corresponding to 114 protons and 184 neutrons and indicated that nuclei with those "magic" numbers of subatomic particles should lie at the center of an island of stability. The nuclear longevity, according to the models, is due to the closing of proton and neutron shells, which renders the particles stable against spontaneous fission much the same way that a filled outer electron shell endows noble gases with chemical inertness. Experimentalists, though, haven't yet found a route to reach the center of the island."

Comments

Rest of article

[richie2000]

Might as well include the rest of the article too:

Other theoreticians calculated the effects of subshell closings in other superheavy nuclei. They concluded that an isotope of hassium containing 108 protons and 162 neutrons (270Hs) should survive a long time--much longer than the millisecond or shorter lifetimes typical of most of the heaviest nuclides.

Now, an international team of experimentalists has detected four of those atoms and probed some of their chemical properties during the roughly 30 seconds the nuclei survive (Phys. Rev. Lett. 2006, 97, 242501). The findings confirm the predictions and provide new statistical data with which such theoretical models can be refined. The team includes 24 scientists from 10 research institutions, including the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Institute for Heavy-Ion Research (GSI), both in Germany, as well as institutions in Russia, the U.S., Switzerland, Japan, China, and Poland.

As TUM graduate student Jan Dvorak explains, the hassium nuclei were formed by firing a high-energy beam of 26Mg projectiles into a target enriched in 248Cm. The target was also doped with a small amount of gadolinium to produce isotopes of hassium's lighter homolog, osmium. Upon formation, nuclear products were exposed to a stream of oxygen. From earlier studies of 269Hs, scientists learned that hassium and osmium--but not other heavy elements--form volatile tetroxides, thereby providing a method for filtering unwanted products.

In the latest experiments, the volatile oxides were swept into a multistage chromatographic detector, which was cooled along its length in a gradient from room temperature at one end to -150 C. On the basis of the two sets of experiments, 269Hs and 270Hs exhibit distinct nuclear properties but similar chemical properties, as expected.

The study paints a very consistent picture of that region of the chart of the nuclides and makes clever use of chemistry to sort out an assignment of atomic number, says Kenton J. Moody, a heavy-element research group leader at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Moody adds that the observations support theoretical calculations that scientists have been using to predict transactinide properties and plan superheavy element experiments.

oh man....

[WillDraven]

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday December 28, @03:07AM

It is the entirely wrong time of day to try to comprehend this one.

Re:oh man....

[Walt Dismal]

We of the planet Snogron do not find this funny. We based our entire civilization upon the use of these atomic variants, and up until the day a high schooler found out how to spontaneously detonate them using a tuning fork and a QonyPilgstation3, we were doing all right. But now the survivors of our fractured planet have spread across the universe to warn others. Do not meddle where the Almighty Spaghetti Monster cautions you not to tread! Physics is not for the foolhardy, the unwise, or people who live in Crawford, Texas! Or all three.

just wait 1000 years.

[macadamia_harold]

Theoretical physicists predicted years ago that some nuclei of elements much more massive than uranium should survive for a relatively long time -- possibly long enough to probe their chemical properties -- if they could be synthesized

In the year 3000, all they'd have to do is follow Nibbler around with a pooper scooper.

Commercial uses?

[iMySti]

Now is your chance to get the super amazing "30 Seconds to Massive Biceps" weight training program, with new enhanced dumbbells! No refunds after product has stabilized.

The short, happy life of Hassium-270...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I'm alive! Wow! This is fun! I've got 114 protons... ...and 184 neutrons! I'm surrounded by high-energy beams,
scientists, and a homolog. Uh, oh! Am I a volatile oxide?!
No, way! I'm being swept in to a multistage chromatographic
detector, which is cooled along its length in a gradient
from room temperature at one end to -150 degrees Centigrade
(at the other end). But I've done nothing wrong!!!
Sure, I've got similar nuclear properties to Hs-269, but
you've got the wrong isotope! Whoa, I'm feeling weird...
Kind of, uh, uhn, un-s-s-stable... I'm definitely --
KA-BOOOM!!!

THE END...?

(Coming up next: The somewhat longer, happier life of Gadolinium,
or Osmium -- I'm not sure, because I know nothing about this
part of the periodic table or nuclear physics!!! LOL!!!)

Re:The short, happy life of Hassium-270...

[tom17]

Oh no, not again

Re:No explosive properties ?

[TapeCutter]

"That sounds kinda like an atomic bomb, why doesn't this stuff explode ?"

It is like an A bomb and it does explode, however the mechanisim is much bigger and the explosions are much smaller. You could also think of the energy released by the decay of the hassium nuclei as a contiuation of the explosion in the same way that Uranium stores some engery from the supernova that created it.

Re:Heavy

[rrkap]

The whole point of the article is that this element has a lifespan on the order of seconds, not milliseconds, which means that you can do chemistry and other fun things with them. But, really, people do this for two reasons: 1) to test the theories that predict a set of very heavy elements that are nearly stable and 2) because they can.

Re:More then just theory...

[calyxa]

I was briefly thrilled the other day about the possibility of counting neutron stars as individual atoms of stable super-heavy elements. I asked my brother, a nuclear physicist, if this was reasonable. he said no, because the neutrons in a neutron star are held together by gravity.

Saving some link-hunting

[TravisW]

Maybe this should have been: "...Island of Stability..." If you're visually inclined, check out the aptly illustrated "chart of nuclides," showing stability as a function of nucleon counts (i.e. proton and neutron counts).

Re:Saving some link-hunting

[dunelin]

Speaking of another Nova, a recent episode of Nova ScienceNOW on PBS featured Element-114. It was a great feature and even kept my high school chemistry classes in rapt attention for 15 minutes. Quite an accomplishment.

Watch the segment online.

short supply

[MaGogue]

Now, an international team of experimentalists has detected four of those atoms ... The team includes 24 scientists from 10 research institutions..

Back when I was in high school, we'd have to share PC computers at 'computer science' classes, but 1 atom per six researchers.. er, couldn't we increase funding, or something?

Re:Heavy

[tom17]

OK, I am missing something here...

For starters, I accept that they can do this but...

1. I thought Hydrogen (and deuterium) were the easiest atoms to fuse together (Call it a naive assumption if you like).
2. I also thought that these were incredibly hard to fuse together.
3. I also thought that even in a star, there is only enough energy to fuse atoms together up to Iron.
4. I also thought that you only get the energy needed to fuse atoms to form elements higher than Iron in a Supernova.
5. So I figured we'd not be able to harness the kinds of energy needed to fuse atoms this big.
6. I have just been watching Steven Hawkins series about all this shit over the xmas break :)
7. I did have rudimentary knowledge of all this stuff before watchign those shows.

So obviously we can create this kind of energy. I must have been confusing "not being able to fuse atoms together" with "not being able to fuse atoms together in an energy efficient manner" - i.e. the reason we dont get more out than in with our fusion energy attemts.

So if we can fuse hige Super Heavy atoms together, why can't we fuse lesser atoms together to make, say, gold?

I obviously have a flaw somewhere in my assumptions, if it's a simple one-liner, please tell me. Otherwise I will just go research it all again and find where I went wrong :)

Thanks for your time.

Tom...

Spiral Periodic Table

[Blighten]

For those of you who aren't theoretical physicists/chemists, another visualization for this Island of Stability is shown in a spiral periodic table. The predicted region of heavy elements that might be stable are labeled superlactindes and come off as a third arm.

Re:Heavy

[khallow]

As I understand it, fusion is necessary to have anything heavier than hydrogen. But you don't get substantial quantities of elements heavier than iron except from supernovas and perhaps some other high energy events (like what a neutron star can do). In particular, as far as we know, everything heavier than iron on Earth either came from one or more supernovas that preceded the existence of Earth or from decay products of those elements. Given the large amount of Uranium 235 and 238 in the Earth's crust, it's likely that all of the heavier elements and isotopes were created in some quantity. So my take is that there's an upper limit to the half life of these elements coming from the fact that we don't obvserve them in nature, but it's a weak limit many orders of magnitude off from what we're seeing in the labs.

Re:Heavy

[CookieOfFortune]

3. The star gets energy out of fusion up to Iron, after that, it loses energy through fusion though it can still occur, creating the heavier elements. I believe they can determine how much longer a star will survive by measuring the iron content, because once it starts producing a lot of iron, it's running out of hydrogen and helium which act as the most efficient fuel. From the article:

the hassium nuclei were formed by firing a high-energy beam of 26Mg projectiles into a target enriched in 248Cm. I don't think this is considered "fusion" per se because it does not occur spontaneously like in a reactor and probably uses up a lot of energy. I don't think this in itself is a new technique, as that's how they created some of the other heavy elements.

Elerium-115 !

[S3D]

So, how soon can we get Elerium-115 and start building UFO Defence ?

Re:Heavy

[kfg]

So if we can fuse hige Super Heavy atoms together, why can't we fuse lesser atoms together to make, say, gold?

We can. In fact, it was one of the first things we did with our new toys It's a fun game.

It's also very, very expensive.

KFG.

Re:What do they do with these new elements?

[As_I_Please]

These elements aren't useful in the commercial or industrial sense. At the moment, only a handful of atoms can be created at a time.

The creation of these elements is more useful for testing our theories of the structure of the nucleus (finding the Island of Stability) and of the periodicity of the chemical elements (if the chemical properties of these rather unnatural elements correspond to their positions on the Periodic Table).

Soon...

[October_30th]

Soon we'll be able to build an anti-gravity machine like that in all the alien flying machines! Bring on the Element 115.

Re:Soon...

[Slashcrap]

Soon we'll be able to build an anti-gravity machine like that in all the alien flying machines! Bring on the Element 115.

Yeah, yeah, everyone thinks these super-heavy elements are going to have incredible properties (based on pretty much no scientific evidence). I think it's going to be awesome when they're finally synthesised and tested and the announcement reads, "We found they were all pretty much like lead, except a bit heavier. Oh, and they generate anti-gravity. No, only joking about the anti-gravity."

Re:Heavy

[UnxMully]

IANAP (I am not a physicist) but I have studied some astronomy including reactions in stars.

Up to the iron group, fusion reactions are exothermic but produce increasingly less energy, so the higher the mass of the resulting element, the more reactions are needed to produce the energy required to sustain a star.

Reactions beyond the iron group are endothermic so require energy from the star to complete.

The other way elements are produced in stars is the addition of neutrons to already existing atoms, hence increasing their atomic mass and producing a different element. IIRC, the energy required to do this is high and exists only in stars.

There are two types of this reacton, slow and fast. Slow happens in the normal course of events of star evolution where fast happens in the seconds of life during and after a supernova. Elements such as uranium are produced during the fast process. From this, I think these guys have replicated one of the slow/fast addition processes rather than what we tend to call fusion.

As I say, IANAP but that's what I remember.

Great

[Dunbal]

Yet another new element to poison Russian spies with...

The actual press release

[Knutsi]

In a recent press release, a major fast-food chain announced to have successfully created Long-lived Super Heavy Elements by changing the oil in their deep fryers to a healthier variety.

Re:More then just theory...

[Xolotl]

Not only that, elements are defined by the number of protons, not neutrons.

Re: your flaw

[tom17]

Yeah I did the school stuff and did well at it, but that was like 17 years ago now so its all started to fade a bit since I switched from science to computers around then :-(

I totally understand about the low duration bursts etc, I just think that, as you say, those shows glance over things too much and that may have just muddled things up in my head a bit this time round.

Thanks for all your responses, they have been helpful and I am back on track :) Now I need to un-learn all the stuff I explained* to my wife while we went through those shows over xmas. Its tough explainign all this stuff to someone who did not learn much about atoms and physics at school, but its a good chance to go through things in your own head again from the basics. Quite the challenge too after so long :)

*With those shows, I find myself doing about an hours of explaining for every 30 mins of show - really shows how much they assume/miss...

Re:Heavy

[Dragonslicer]

The other way elements are produced in stars is the addition of neutrons to already existing atoms, hence increasing their atomic mass and producing a different element.

Just to clarify that point, adding neutrons to an atom does not directly produce a different element, it produces a different isotope of the same element. Neutrons can, however, be converted into protons, usually by emitting an electron and an antineutrino (I believe neutrons can also be converted to protons by absorbing a positron and a neutrino, but it doesn't happen nearly as frequently).

Re:futurama

[vertinox]

and i thought the professor was a cartoon character!!

Nope, he was a real live person:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth

And he did invent something called the Fusor

Although, Futurama did pay homage to him with the Professor character.

Re:Reminds me of the book...

[cheesybagel]

Actually, there are small amounts of natural Plutonium, due to supernova explosions or natural fission reactors.

I guess the problem is it is pretty hard to find new elements if you do not actually know what you are searching for. Natural Plutonium was only discovered after man-made Plutonium was made in large quantities and well characterized. Heck, Aluminium was only manufactured in quantity in the XIXth century.

Re:sweet!

[RobertB-DC]

let's cover the next warzone with depleted Hassium !

Sounds great, except that in the 30 seconds or so it took you to look at your battleground map, you'll have half as much Hassium as you started with...

Better names needed

[RealProgrammer]

I'm not a physicist, and barely remember the difference between protons and neutrons. Really. Probably it's the way they choose the names, having nothing to do with the physical properties of the elements, and not even sounding cool. I mean, Uranium, Plutonium, Titanium have cool names. Krypton -- cool name. "Carbon" is at least descriptive, deriving from the Latin for burning. I've always thought "Gold", "Iron", and "Lead" were onomatopoeic. And everyone knows that "Sodium" is Greek for "soda pop". Good names, all, and they don't sound phake and made up.

But "Hassium"? "Bohrium"? Not cool, not descriptive. These are vanity names, like getting your name in a phony star registry, or some weak license plate, except it goes in the encyclopedia. Yes, I know there's this tradition for naming the radioactive ones after people, but that kind of thing ought to be left to the entomologists, hadn't it? I mean, what if there's a disaster, and Jonesium kills a bunch of people and gives the rest weird cancers? How will ol' Doc Jones feel about his legacy then, hmm? Better to be devoured by wasp larvae. So clearly, we need better, less risky names for these elements.

Let's see, an element that sticks around for 30 seconds and then goes away. I believe I can come up with a few right here, even without some fancy-shmancy degree:

• Postite
• BlogTrollium
• Wevedoneitohnowehaventium (or Heybosslookatuhnevermindium)
• Anaviagrium
• Blinddatium

It's a wonder they don't put me in charge of much here at the gas station.

Re:What do they do with these new elements?

[kfg]

Plus you look pretty stupid pusing an atom around your desktop while making "Vroom, vroom" noises.

KFG