Slashdot Mirror
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."
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!!!)
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).
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?
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.