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Stable Roentgenium Claimed Found In Gold
eldavojohn writes "Amnon Marinov, a physicist specializing in super heavy elements, claims that a stable isotope of roentgenium is commonly found alongside gold, just in very small quantities that we could not measure before. To prove this, he boiled gold in a vacuum, postulating that as the gold evaporated, the roentgenium should remain. He did this for two weeks and then passed the resulting mess through a mass spectrometer and was left with several peaks that could be explained away except for one. Marinov lead the team that found the first super heavy 122 thorium isotope in nature a few years back and now claims that, despite all indications that this super heavy element shouldn't exist longer than a few seconds, he has found a stable isomer of roentgenium in nature. Is he on to something, or overlooking a simpler explanation in his quest for evidence of the island of stability long theorized by physicists?"
"Nuclear Isomers" exist, which refers to excitation states inside the nucleus. What he is saying is that such a excited state in the nucleus makes the element 'more stable' than its ground state, and thus doesn't decay.
Sulfur is more reactive, so the geological and chemical processes which form sulfur deposits also separate it from gold. Gold doesn't react with as many things as sulfur, so an element with similar characteristics will be more diluted in sulfur than in a gold deposit. On the other hand, if this element does indeed also travel with sulfur then there's a chance that larger amount might be in the larger sulfur deposits even if there's less per ton.
Take a look at this.
The reason why this is so is that nuclei just like atoms in chemistry have shells (in chemistry it's electrons with nuclei it's protons and neutrons) filled shells are more stable which is why there is an island of stability. The island of stability is centered around the magic numbers 114 (the number of protons) and 184 (the number of neutrons) magic numbers of either protons or neutrons tend to create more stable nuclei. nuclei with odd numbers of either are less stable in the same way that Fluorine is less stable chemically compared to Neon. The nuclear shell is not full and is therefore less stable to various modes of decay.
Your point concerning alpha and fission modes of decay is more likely to increase the half life significantly excluding electron capture and beta decay modes.
elements 114-116 have isotopes with half lives that are significantly higher than nuclei in the 100-113 range as these lower nuclei tend to have half lives measured in fractions of a second. The island of stability is a misnomer. It'd be far more accurate to say that it is an island of relative not absolute stability. The odds of finding any nuclei beyond uranium with a comparable half life or even stable nuclei is remote.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
The term has different meanings in nuclear physics than in chemistry. In nuclear physics, it refers to an unusually long-lived excited state of the nucleus.
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