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Copernicium Confirmed As Element 112
Several sources are reporting that the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry has confirmed Copernicium as element 112 on the periodic table of elements with the symbol Cn. "The naming of the new element will be the culmination of a long, fraught journey involving fierce competition, dashed hopes, clever detective work and even a brush with scientific misconduct. With a nucleus containing 112 protons — 20 more than uranium, the heaviest of the naturally occurring elements — it will be the weightiest atom whose existence has been confirmed so far."
Now there will never be a chinesium (although i guess we could re-name lead).
<troll/>
Uranium was seen at a local club with Copernicium, probably to make her feel better about herself.
Minor quibble... it's the heavies of the naturally occurring elements on Earth. Heaver elements usually require different conditions (higher energy levels, gravity differences, etc) that can be found on earth. But there's nothing to say they can't be found elsewhere...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
What about ununbium?
Can't be worse than Unobtainium *gag*.
Thankyou Avatar, for the dumbest name of a substance in movie history.
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I think there was a commercial on QVC last night for some jewelry made of this stuff.
Fibonaccium
Unobtanium has been around for far longer than Avatar.
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtanium
Avatar wasn't the first use of that, they actually reused a name that had been used in literature for decades...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium
It's theorised that somewhere in the 1xx range lies one or more "islands of stability", where one or more undiscovered heavy elements exist with either very long half-lives, or stable nuclei.
Element names are used to honour people and places for all sorts of reasons, and Copernicus clearly deserves it.
Röntgen's contributions were not exactly nuclear physics either, and Alfred Nobel wasn't even a physicist (neither was Vasili Samarsky-Bykhovets).
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
On the other hand, they had a pretty interesting scientific backstory for the movie. When I was watching the movie, when the guy set down the "unobtanium" on a platform and it floated, I immediately thought, "Huh... I bet that's supposed to be a room-temperature superconductor. Which would explain the demand." And indeed, that's exactly the intent. According to the backstory, part of the reason for the intense initial interest in the moon was the very high magnetic field strength it displayed. And since superconductors expel magnetic fields, leading to stable levitation, the floating mountains and continents are actually scientifically plausible in such a scenario. The very high magnetic field and the presence of the moon orbiting in the radiation belt of a gas giant leads to very high levels of ionizing radiation at the poles and at the intense local distortions in the magnetic field from the "unobtanium" -- to the degree that they're not just deadly, but also lead to a large current flowing through the planet.
The explanation for the mineral name is that scientists frustrated on Earth used began using the name "unobtanium" in reference to high temperature superconductors (before stable versions were found on Pandora) that it stuck.
Did you really name your son "Robert');DROP TABLE Students;--"?
Exactly you can find it right between the unaffordium and the baloneyum.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Since plutonium, element 93, is found in uranium ores (being bred there by neutron capture) and Pu-244 (half-life 80.8 million years) has also survived in detectable quantities from the formation of the Earth, uranium is not the heaviest natural element on Earth.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Yeah, I've used Unobtainium for years, and everyone here at work knows what's meant. (Admittedly, I'm an Engineer.) Okay, not quite true, as two foreign Engineers didn't know what it was.
In Avatar, Unobtanium was the McGuffin -- it didn't matter what it was, just that there was a reason that Homo Sapiens was on a different, hostile planet that wasn't for xenorelations. Water's plentiful on comets, any minerals would be easier to get from asteroids, since there's way less of a gravity well, and so the only reason we'd be there is either to talk to aliens or to get a rare material.
A room-temperature superconductor is pretty much the Holy Grail of Physics.
It doesn't explain why the humans didn't just take the mountains and / or use orbital bombardment.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
copernicus was named after copper (dad was a copper smith or something) so this makes two elements named after copper. not very original.
Naming, yes. The summary is badly informed! The synthesis of element 112 has been confirmed for quite a while. The only story here is that IUPAC has officially endorsed a name for it.
The element of surprise?
It has an atomic weight of: 0.o
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Nuclear Chemistry Feed @ Feed Distiller
I'd bet dollars to donuts that that particular plot element was thrown in at the last minute to explain why they had to bring along this incompetent, untrained grunt to take part in a scientific mission. If the didn't have the DNA requirement, they could have used anyone.
I'm sure someone out there was reading over the script and said, "Hey, wait a minute -- why are they bringing HIM of all people?" To which Cameron probably debated the point for a while before ultimately conceding that they had to patch that issue.
The plot to Avatar was nothing special -- pick trope, write script. What made the movie impressive, however, was not just top-notch graphics, but also excellent worldbuilding behind it.
Did you really name your son "Robert');DROP TABLE Students;--"?
Exactly you can find it right between the unaffordium and the baloneyum.
Bloody Yanks - those of us who remember the Queen's English know it's spelled 'bolognium'...
... or was that 'bologniminium?'
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
So, to nitpick, since transuranics use the actual form of scientist's names, it should really be Kupfernigkium, Kf.
(Otherwise, Einsteinium would have to be Unopetrium.)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Heaviest -> most massive, Densest -> most dense. No better wording needed. Especially given that it specifies "elements" and not "single element materials"
You did remember to specify that your densities were at STP didn't you?