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First Superheavy Element Found In Nature
KentuckyFC writes "The first naturally occurring superheavy element has been found. An international team of scientists found several nuclei of unbibium in a sample of the naturally occurring heavy metal thorium. Unbibium has an atomic number of 122 and an atomic weight of 292. In general, very heavy elements tend to be unstable but scientists have long predicted that even heavier nuclei would be stable. The group that found unbibium in thorium say it has a half life in excess of 100 million years and an abundance of about 10^(-12) relative to thorium, which itself is about as abundant as lead." I'd also like it known that my spell checker did not know 'unbibium' before today, but it is now one word closer to encompassing all human knowledge.
Unbibium is the temporary name, of course. Eventually it will receive another name.
Since it's super-heavy and naturally-occurring, I suggest "Cowboynealium".
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Its quite amazing how singular Nuclei can be found-- What kind of procedures are used to identify specific elements. More importantly, were they only looking for Unbibium or any of the superheavy metals?
Didn't anyone from Area 51 said that a very heavy element like Ununpentium (115) was supposed to shield us from gravity, thus empowering us to create a flying saucer and travel to other stars and galaxies? I guess that Unbibium (122) is even better...
I am so excited!
Unbibium. It does not as of now have this article cited. someone be sure to correct that.
If people can get past, can they get future? Best way to confuse a stoner
Christ - that should be a top level story unto itself... :D
BlackNova Traders
I think its atomic weight it delicious ...
"The group that found unbibium in thorium say it has a half life in excess of 100 million years and an abundance of about 10^(-12) relative to thorium, which itself is about as abundant as lead."
So how soon can we expect it to turn up in pet food and children's toys?
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
All I ever find in thorium are star rubies, blue sapphires, huge emeralds, and Azerothian diamonds.
Here's a link describing the Island of Stability
Neat stuff: apparently they've theorized a bunch of these super-heavy elements, they just haven't been observed yet (until now)!
Submitter's spellcheck becomes self-aware. In a panic, they try to pull the plug. Spellcheck fights back.
Island of stability.
Actually, you know what, go ask your mother.
Magic.
It involves throwing of bones and spherical crystals.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Spellcheck suffers a nervous breakdown while viewing lolcatz.
;)
The founder of ICHC is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Normality restored. Whatever constitutes "normal", anyway.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
You mean Jumbonium.
Mod parent down (Score: -1, Misremembering Fictional Elements from a Sci-Fi Cartoon Series).
It's important, but I'd hardly call it one of the greatest discoveries made. It just confirms what we've suspected all along--There are stable elements past Uranium. There's a very narrow set of conditions that can synthesize them, and we haven't had alot of luck in the labs, but now that we know nature's managed it, we can possibly devise new experiments better aimed at sucessfuly generating these heavier elements.
As far as how it got there naturally--presumably the same way all the naturally occuring heavy elements came to be--Supernovae billions of years ago.
I'm a professor of isotope geochemistry.
After reading their paper, it's clear they haven't proven their case. There are *so* many possible explanations for the handful of counts they observed that this result should be ignored. Let me give a few:
- Molecular ions. They say there are no known molecular ions at this mass, I say BS. There are lots of observed molecular ions out there whose exact atomic makeup we haven't figured out. The worst is the interference on 87Sr that screws up lots of icpms age dating work and is not 87Kr (or we could correct for it). But there are others.
- Hydrocarbons: They say there are no hydrocarbons in the blank -- have they ever thought of hydrocarbons that are only ionized when lots of other things (ie a sample) is being ionized? No. They exist though, and are difficult to rule out. They didn't try very hard on this one. Try aspirating a solution of something else (U maybe, or Pb) and see what they get on 292. I'll bet there are counts, and they're not superheavies.
Another reason to be skeptical is that their Th solution is chemically purified. How are they going to do that without getting rid of the superheavy, which is after all not Th, and will be removed by any chemical process.
This is highly dubious work.
Let's say it has a half-life of around 100 million years then. But how are they formed? I thought only heavy naturally occuring elements were formed in high energy situations like supernovae, but this is would be a relatively speaking short timeframe.
So how are minerals with a "short" half-life formed on Earth? Wouldn't it require a quite immense energy to fuse these atoms? I suppose the Earth has to have the energies necessary, but... What's this talk about supernovae being required to fuse atoms heavier than iron (unlike typical star fusion that I believe can go as far as this) all about in that case?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Oh, boy! Time to navigate over to United Nuclear to pick up a gram of this stuff for my element collection!
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
The last electrons to go in are 5g electrons. So, these nuclei have the only non-excited 5g electrons. It adds another step to the periodic table. This is super neat.
Extra steps.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
I looked at the abstract for the paper. The ambiguous wording is because they don't know the atomic number of the element yet. They know the atomic mass is 292, and based on theoretical calculations of isotope lifetimes, they hypothesize the atomic number is 122. They haven't confirmed that, though.
Even if your bomb can convert matter to energy with 100% efficiency, it's limited in the amount of energy that it can produce. e=mc**2 and all that, about 20 kilotons per gram.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
What, do you think nuclear reactors are build and atomic bombs are dropped on the large, naturally occurring thorium fields that we all remember playing in as children?
Ah, how I remember passing the days on the bountiful thorium fields of my youth, before they paved them over with asphalt. How will the youth of today grow up to be responsible adults without the healthy, life-giving exposure to thorium we all used to get? Good times, good times.
(It never ceases to amaze me how rationality just goes flying out the window, even here, when any subject even remotely related to radiation comes up. I understand why, but it still amazes me.)
I asked a metallurgist once about adamantium. He said it was impossible. I tried to convince him otherwise, but he was adamant there was no such thing.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Long ago there was found considerable evidence for heavy elements. If you peer at any chunk of mica you can find long dark tracks, longer and darker than are caused by any known type of radioactive decay. The trick is finding incontrovertible proof of these atoms *before* they decay. If they have short half lives (short as in under ten million years or so), it's going to be hard to find their needleness in the haystack.
Well yeah, but a stable element with all those freaky f and g orbitals might have some extremely interesting and probably even useful chemical properties - in metallurgy, catalysts. etc.
It's been a long time, but I had read something about a prediction that element 126 was the expected stable superheavy. Just as electrons have shells, and filled shells make elements chemically neutral (like the noble gasses), neuclei have energy shells that occupy a lower ground state energy when completely filled. Based on the known elements, 126 was predicted.
Here's some links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbihexium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/84/i10/8410notw9.html
Did they *calculate* the half-life or did they *measure* it?
Time to go farming in Burning Steppes for this new material.
It's important, but I'd hardly call it one of the greatest discoveries made. It just confirms what we've suspected all along--There are stable elements past Uranium. There's a very narrow set of conditions that can synthesize them, and we haven't had alot of luck in the labs, but now that we know nature's managed it, we can possibly devise new experiments better aimed at sucessfuly generating these heavier elements.
As far as how it got there naturally--presumably the same way all the naturally occuring heavy elements came to be--Supernovae billions of years ago.
A good observation. But, this will at least refine our theory of stellar evolution. Iron on Iron action, though hot, is not a net gain. It releases too many neutrinos for our little white dwarf to contain. The core, lacking radiation pressure will collapse and spew. Most elements heavier than iron are created during a supernova, as the nuclear shockwave travels from the core in milliseconds. The heavier the elements are, the more energy it takes to make them. More energy, requires a bigger star. Bigger star often means older star. Astronomy is a lot like Milf hunting. However, there is a chance that this element may be formed from natural decay. Chemical analysis of rock crystals can reveal if nuclear decay has occured. Either way, if this is verified with pear review, it could have interesting consequences. BTW, the sudden increase of nutrinoes is the only outside indicator that somethings going to blow. The enterprize better have a calibrated sphere of photoluminescent dry cleaning fluid on board, or they're screwed. The shockwave will travel close enough to the speed of light, that by the time Captain Picard can see it and think "oh CR@P", they would have been smeared; not by just an explosion of radiation, but by a shockwave as dense as a wall of angry bricks. Life, as we know it, is made up of the most common elements in the universe. This raises the question: Where the hell are my naked orion dancing girls?One of the places considerred for finding 122,124,& 126 is in the X-ray adsobtion lines in super-novas. Then look at how those lines change over time, and half-lives can be measured.
:-)
btw we can be assured that it is VERY unlikely that 126 is stable since we can't find any of it. We can be quite sure that anything with a half-life of >1Byr would be findable in some amount in all the searching that has been done.
Also, although 126 is 'perfect' in terms of protons, it is far from perfect in nuetrons, that is why 122 and 124 are more often sought, a little low on protons and a little high on the nuetrons might still find a some-what stable nucleaus.
It is VERY exicting news though. Element 122 with such a massive nucleaus will have a number of very special properties.
They claim it's half-life is about 10e8 years. Since our solar system is very roughly 1e10 years old, that's about 100 half-lives, or a decrease by a factor of 2^100 or about 1e30. Since its atomic weight is 292, that suggests that an original sample of about 292e7 grams should have decayed to 1e7 moles * 6e23 at/mol / 1e30 = 6 atoms left. In other words, an original chunk of this stuff of mass 2,920,000 kilos would have decayed to 6 atoms. But when you condsider how much mass of all sorts of elements exist on the earth, and take into account chemical concentration, one would think more of this stuff would be around.... maybe. Does anyone know about the frequency of discovery of naturally radioactive isotopes with a similar half-life that are not part of the decay path of other longer lived radioactive isotopes? In other words, is it reasonable to expect to find significant quantities of something with a half-life of around 1e8 years that isn't being formed from other decay products any more?
Also, if the reason it is so rare is because so little was formed, perhaps that indicates it is extremely hard, even in a supernova, to create this element? What does that suggest about our ability to artificially synthesise this element?
Very interestng....
Scientist points at periodic table. "See it goes up to 292."
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning