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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."
now i need a new periodic table
Well, as far as Sig's go, Freud was a doozy.
mostly because the fun information these days isn't related to the number of electrons but how stable the atoms are, which helps theories that describe how stable the elements should be to be verified.
A variety of reasons. First of all, because it is interesting and fun. Why do you think people are searching for very large prime numbers? http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/10/15/154227/12M-Digit-Prime-Number-Sets-Record-Nets-100000 Do you think they are all doing this because of possible benefits to abstract areas of number theory any more than people climb Everest for practical reasons? Second, seeing that these elements match up to our predictions help us get a better understanding of physics. Third, there is some reason to suspect that there may be farther ahead islands of stability where the elements become more stable again. While it is unlikely that those areas are stable enough for those elements to live long enough to be of practical use, the chance otherwise is not tiny. So there may be direct practical benefits. But the main reasons are because it is cool and humans are ever curious creatures.
Well, the closer we can get to finding an island of stability, the better.
Iron Oxide is not the degradation of the iron atom but the binding of the molecule to Oxygen. In fact, nuclei of the iron atom has one of the highest binding energies per nucleon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Binding_energy_curve_-_common_isotopes.svg
To the right of the apex in the chart above, fission is the process to release energy. To the left of the apex, fusion. At the apex, one of the elements you will find is iron. To make a long story short, this chart is one of the reasons why you find iron cores in stars.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
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!