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Creating Designer Isotopes
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to a Michigan State University (MSU) news release, 'Made-to-order isotopes hold promise on science's frontier,' nuclear physicists can now start a new career as isotope designers. These scientists can build specific rare isotopes to solve scientific problems and open doors to new technologies. The lead researcher says this approach has already given us the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan technology. He's now going further, saying that he wants to build objects 100,000 times smaller than the atomic nucleus. He calls this 'femtotechnology.' Also available are additional details and pictures of the tools used for this kind of research, picked from a 415-page design paper." Update: 05/11 14:30 GMT by SS: Readers have noted that the summary inaccurately portrays the scale of the 'femtotechnology.' The MSU researcher refers to "the capacity to construct objects on an even more minute scale, that of the atomic nucleus 100,000 times smaller."
The term femtotechnology to describe technology built from subatomic particles, as nanotechnology describes technology is not new. The first occurrence of it I've seen was in Pushing Ice. Can anyone provide an earlier reference?
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> Atoms of the same element that have the same number of protons
Otherwise they would not be of the same element.
> but different numbers of neutrons (different atomic masses).
I didn't RTFA, but "isotopes are the different versions of an element" translates nicely into "isotopes are the versions of a single element [note the constant number of protons here] with different masses/different numbers of neutrons". You see: element = element, version = same number of protons.
While "different versions" is a somewhat unspecific term, I don't see no misunderstanding of the subject here. If TFA was written for a highly professional audience, I would ask why there was an explanation of isotopes given, anyway, because everybody knows what isotopes are. If not, this somewhat unspecific explanation is more than sufficient and accurate.
I really don't know what your point is.
The chemical changes that brought about the formation of the elements in the bellies of stars...
If you're changing elements from one to another, it's not a chemical change. It's nuclear! That's one of the definitions of a nuclear change. What kind of science journalism is this?
I don't see how Sue Nichols is wrong.
:).
She said: "Isotopes are the different versions of an element. Their nuclei have different numbers of neutrons, and thus give them different properties".
It is fairly accurate to say that isotopes are different versions of an element.
As for your remark: "Maybe she was in a hurry to go shopping", maybe you should slow down a bit?
You cannot build structures with electrons and positrons which are this small. The reason being that the binding energy for EM processes (the strongest force which an e+/- feels) is far too weak to confine the particles to a region as small as 1 fm. For example positronium has a binding energy of 6.8eV, roughly half that of a hydrogen atom and hence it will be slighly larger.
The misconception comes about because the electron is not a particle but a wave. You can trap the wave in a potential but it is still a wave. The smaller the space you want to confine it to the shorter the wavelength required and as the wavelength decreases the energy increases (deBroglie wavelength lambda=Planck's constant/momentum [lambda=h/p]). This means that energies O(10^6) times larger than EM binding energies to confine an electron to such a small area.
The only force we know of that is strong enough to do this is the strong nuclear force which is only felt by quarks. Hence, given our current knowledge, the only thing you could build such a tiny structure out of is quarks...which is why the nucleus is made of these!