Superheavy Element 114 Finally Re-created

[n2doc]

y Alexis Madrigal September 29, 2009 | 12:48 pm | Categories: Physics



By firing calcium isotopes into a plutonium target inside a particle accelerator, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have finally confirmed the Russian discovery of the superheavy element 114.

It wasn’t easy. It took more than a week of running the experiment to generate a measly two atoms of the stuff, which they reported in Physical Review Letters last week. It’s basic science at the outer limits of matter.

“We’re learning the limits of nuclei,” said Ken Gregorich, a nuclear physicist at LBL. “How many protons can you pack into a nucleus before it falls apart?”

Uranium, which has 92 protons in its nucleus, is the heaviest element found in substantial quantities in nature. The first man-made “transuranic” elements like plutonium were discovered and synthesized during the 1940s in the run-up to the creation of nuclear weapons. Since then, it’s gotten harder and harder to produce new elements, but scientists have kept at it. One reason is they hypothesized that certain isotopes of very heavy particles might exist in an “island of stability” that would allow them to stick around longer than the fractions of a second most synthetic elements last.

more:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/superheavy-elements-are-rad/

[Chemisse]

1. What I want to know

Is what they are going to name it!

[Systematic Chaos]

2. I'd definitely go with something really intellectual.

Maybe "poopypantsium", or how about "nimrodatite"?

Or there's always the option of illudium Q-36!

[Chemisse]

5. LOL - nt

[n2doc]

3. I'll go with "Palinite"

1. It's really expensive to produce.
2. It doesn't last long, but still longer than one would expect.
3. It disappears in a showy flash of particles, leaving nothing of consequence.

[Cirque du So-What]

4. I thought I was too jaded

for the spontaneous spit-take, but you've proven me wrong.

:spray:

[Chemisse]

6. And it's really freakish that such a thing can even exist.

I think that often about Palin.