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Element 118 detected
Hermann wrote to us with the news that the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has isolated element 118, and it's immediate decay product, element 116. Check out the technical details as well as the 88-Inch Cyclotron used.
I think the problem with that "simple" method was that elements were being discovered separately at relative synchronous times.
In paticular, in Russia and the USA in the early 80's. All the work done then was considered top secret, due to the Cold War. Once one country publicly announced the discovery of an element (with their name), it was no longer considered a secret, and the other country would announce that they actually found it already, and gave it their own name. They may or may not have, but there was no trust between the two nations, so it was irrelevant anyway.
And of course, the names themselves were politically motivated (or at least nationally connected), which caused more problems, since the Russians could not accept e.g. Californium, while the Americans couldn't handle Stalinium (not real). So the researchers in each country kept using their own names, while duking it out in the international science foundations for the ultimate naming rights. Meanwhile, all the research that was being done was written up with different names for the elements, and mass confusion was present.
So the afore-mentioned international science foundations said "screw all of you", and came up with a generic naming convention, and no one got to name the element. The naming became consistent, and neutral scientists danced the happy dance. Then the Cold War ended, scientists everywhere became much more open, and we're left with a silly naming convention.
Quite simple, really.
Actually, they're numbered first, named later. IUPAC has recommended names for most of the recent extremely heave elements
pooptruck
Not a problem. Here, if you're interested, is a description of the "magic island" idea and an explanation of why this article is significant.
Some elements are more stable than others. Lead will remain Lead no matter how long you leave it, but Plutonium will decay over a few thousand years into lighter elements. In addition, there are many types - isotopes - of each element. These all have the same number of protons but have different numbers of neutrons. Some are more stable than others; for instance, Carbon-12 is stable, but Carbon-14 is not. (The "12" and "14" are the total number of particles - protons and neutrons - in the atom's nucleus).
If you draw a chart of all of the isotopes of all of the elements, a pattern emerges. The chart has element number ("atomic number", the number of protons) as one axis, and "atomic weight" (the total number of particles - protons and neutrons) as the other axis. The stable isotopes form a band running up this chart diagonally, slightly curved.
Further irregularities are observed. In places, there are large blotches of mostly-stable elements, and in other places there are gaps where the elements are mostly unstable. These blotches are sometimes called "islands of stability".
Islands of stability happen when the number of protons or the number of neutrons in an atom's nucleus is a "magic number", or close to a "magic number". As you add protons or neutrons to a nucleus, they stack up in "shells" at different energy levels, much as electrons do in an atom. A completely full shell - a "closed shell" - is very stable. The "magic numbers" are the numbers of protons or neutrons required to have the outermost shell of the nucleus "closed" - exactly full. Iron is in the middle of one island of stability, and lead is in the middle of another.
One problem that scientists have had when trying to produce "superheavy" elements - elements with more protons than any element that we've found in nature - is that elements are less stable the more protons they have. This is why many of the "heavy" elements (elements with many protons) are radioactive. As they climb into the range of elements that have more than 100 protons, the elements get very unstable, so that you barely have enough time to detect them before they decay (or sometimes are left only looking at the decay products).
However, many scientists hope that there will be another island of stability around elements 116-118. These elements would have "magic" numbers of protons and neutrons, and might live much longer than the other "superheavy" elements produced so far. Some isotopes of them might even be stable. This "island" is called the "magic island of stability", because it's a group of stable or almost-stable elements in the middle of a sea of very unstable elements and isotopes. For many years, scientists have been trying to produce elements that were in this "magic island" to see if they actually are stable.
This article describes one of these experiments, that has succeeded in producing one of the elements in the "island". Whether it's as stable as hoped remains to be seen. In fact, each of the isotopes of this element will have to be produced to see whether or not the island really is stable.
Very exciting, for people who follow the quest for "superheavy" elements regularly
Great. It will be interesting to see what the half-lifes of elements in the "Island of Stability" end up being. Half-lives of some of the intermediate elements have been milliseconds or longer, but it remains to be seen whether elements in the island will be stable enough to synthesize in macroscopic quantities (not that there's a good reason to do so yet).
I'm not sure that it would. The atomic weight of an element isn't the only influence on its density. The density is determined by the atomic weight, the crystal structure of the element in solid form, and the distance between atoms. The last item (and the middle item, to an extent) is a result of the structure of the electron shells around the atom.
IIRC, the second row of transition elements had a peculiar property that made atoms in that row very compact. Similar pecularities may exist elsewhere, but IIRC the actinides and following elements weren't particularly dense.
Osmium is still the densest element IIRC. I'm not sure exactly why uranium is used in shells as opposed to something denser, but it still works. It's dense, stronger than lead, and they have a lot of it left over when they produce enriched uranium (depleted uranium is uranium with less than the usual amount of U235; enriched has more).
Superheavy elements would be very difficult to produce in significant quantities with known techniques. Shells will probably continue to be uranium for quite a while.
The chemical properties of an element (all that electron shell stuff) don't affect the nuclear properties.
The force involved in holding a nucleus together (the 'strong' force) is many orders of magnitude stronger than the electromagnetic force.
So element 118 being a 'noble gas' would have no effect on its decay time.
Roy Ward.
Perhaps Microsoft will purchase the rights to name the new element for marketing purposes. How about Gatesium? Or Microsoft ActiveElement 118?
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Looks like the 'island of stability' needs a few more neutrons in the mix.
I was also interested in this little atom smasher of theirs. The article states:
"In operation since 1961, the 88-inch Cyclotron has been upgraded with the addition of a high-performance ion sources and can now accelerate beams of ions as light as hydrogen or as heavy as uranium. "
Hmmm... I wonder what an accelerated beam of uranium ions would do when it hit something less massive like plates of steel?
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
From what I remember, the theory was that around element 116 to 118 there will be a completely stable atom. Like, you can make siding out of it and not worry about gamma radiation. Milliseconds might be more stable than those guys are used to, but it definitly is NOT stable.
It merely doesn't decay fast enough to count as an explosion.
Hmmm, it's not an atomic explosion, it's merely Uranium decaying very very fast.
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."