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Element 114 Verified
ExRex writes "A team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has observed the production of superheavy element 114, confirming the results of researchers at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia. Those researchers first reported producing element 114 in 1999. Such independent verification is important, particularly given the evidence of fabricated results for other superheavy elements. If you're a subscriber to Physical Review Letters, you can download the full article."
Mr. President, we cannot allow an Element 114 gap!
That's HEAVY.
We already know how many electrons and protons there are gonna be -- why not just publish the formula and the basic properties like Mendeleyev used to do?
now i need a new periodic table
Well, as far as Sig's go, Freud was a doozy.
Fine, fine, element 114 has been verified. Now, if they could just get a move on with element 115, we could make our UFO Power Sources work and finally get those Firestorms into the air. We're practically defenseless against the sectoids!
Didn't the team that falsified the info about 114 and 116 come from Lawrence Livermoore
Stupid question from a non-physicist -- What is the point in synthesizing elements with half lives measured in seconds if not microseconds?
Such independent verification is important, particularly given the evidence of fabricated results for other superheavy elements.
Unfortunately, the article that story is pointing to claiming that it was fraud rather than error has expired from Yahoo's site. Do you have a better link?
Didn't the team that falsified the info about 114 and 116 come from Lawrence Livermoore
What is the chain of thought that leads researchers to that level of fraud? Eventual exposure and disgrace is always the most likely outcome.
this guy had time to make a youtube video on the subject
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX-gqFChAyk
Great! Only one more to go and we can start researching powersuits and UFO construction.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
To Elerium-115!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elerium-115
An old Poul Anderson story, Mirkheim, used a stable superheavy element, eka-platinum, as a Maguffin.
In the novel, the stuff was produced in a supernova. A gas giant planet was walloped by the explosion, blowing away its atmosphere leaving a creamy nougat center very dense rocky core. The heavy elements produced by the supernova were plastered across its surface.
As I recall, the planet's discovery by the galaxy's great powers caused a political crisis and the threat of war. The stuff was highly valued. The one use I recall was a hull plating used by hydrogen-breathing races.
One more to go till we get Elerium-115.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
Yeah, um, show us some photos! While you're at it, I wanna see Unnilquadium too! And if ya' got some time, how about some unobtainium?
Spork.
P.S. Spork.
I hear element 114 is highly radioactive.
The shareholder is always right.
Could of sworn this was up 3 weeks ago on CNN. Slow news day?
>
I was pleased to read that Heino Nitsche is one of the project's lead researchers. His general chemistry course at Berkeley was very informative and enjoyable (and not just because he has a German accent and glorious mad scientist mustache); I've yet to meet someone who can get that excited about chemistry at 9 a.m. :)
I still remember a story he told us during the unit on radioactivity and nuclear decay. One of his cats, sick with cancer, was treated with radioactive I-131. After the cat "cooled off" at the vet hospital, Heino took him home, nursed him back to health, and, like a true scientist, measured the cat's radioactivity every morning with a Geiger counter. Sure enough, the measured decay curve strongly matched the predicted one. The cat lived for several more years, too.
If you want a brief overview of the history of heavy element synthesis, especially as it pertains to Berkeley, check out his lecture (47) on the subject.
What we really need next is Element 119 ;-)
Hey let's put it in the LHC and see what hap(&(*%&* NO CARRIER.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Upon reading the headline, my first thought was "dammit, now Tom Lehrer's Elements Song is even further behind."
I have no idea what nothin means 'bout nuthin, but all this theoretical shit means nuthin, until you hit the jackpot.
Then, we get the magical stuff to built space elevators, time machines, and whatnot, right?
All joking aside, you don't know what weird shit is good for, until you have enough of it to play around with to find out, right?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Let's wait until they discover element 126, formally known as Unbihexium, but labeled by Action Comics as the atomic number for Kryptonite.
Or, what would you like as a name?
teleny, friend of cats.
Once we find elerium, all the world's energy problems should be solved forever.
That's HEAVY.
There's that word again; "heavy". Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the earth's gravitational pull?
Unlike porn, which yada yada rimshot hey-ooh!
While the hole they made wasn't black, it was very very dark. And heavy.
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elerium-115?
I thought the official name of element 115 was Ununpentium. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ununpentium
It's listed as Uup on a Dept of Navy periodic chart that was issued in the 1990s.
Robert Lazar discusses applications of Element 115 at his web site: http://www.boblazar.com/closed/gravity.htm
Bob Lazar is still around ? After all that area 51 crap ?
element discovers you!
Good people go to bed earlier.
Its a reference to the seminal PC game X-COM aka UFO: Enemy Unknown.
There's an interesting caveat to calling this element heavy. Just because it has 114 protons doesn't necessarily mean that it's "heavy". The "heaviest" elements are the densest ones, which tend to fall in the middle of the transition metals. If I recall correctly, 114 falls on the on the right side of the transition metals, so it might not be all that "heavy". There are reasons why this happen, something about the f-orbitals actually allowing atoms to get closer to one another, but it's been a long time since college chemistry.
The only way to tell the difference between a hamster and a gerbil is that the hamster has more white meat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne6ZZTfiQAw
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.