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Science

Element 110 Now Darmstadtium 202

Posted by michael from the ununoctium-fiasco-safely-behind-us dept.
photoblur writes "It's time to update your periodic table of the elements! Element 110 has been officially named 'darmstadtium' (Ds), after the GSI lab in Darmstadt, Germany. The GSI lab has also been officially recognized for discovering element 111."
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Element 110 Now Darmstadtium More

Element 110 Now Darmstadtium

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  • Name of Element 111 (Score:3, Funny)

    by yanestra ( 526590 ) on Friday October 10, 2003 @02:17PM (#7184874) Journal
    I propose Rodgauium for the name of element 111. This town (Rodgau) is even moring boring than Darmstadt. (No wonder one famous band calls itself the Rodgau Monotones...)

    • Re:Name of Element 111 (Score:4, Funny)

      by FileNotFound ( 85933 ) on Friday October 10, 2003 @02:22PM (#7184896) Homepage Journal
      I think "Nobodycaresanymoreium" would be a great name for element 111.

      I mean seriously, how many samples of 111 exist in non lab enviroments? For how long?

      I am confused by the purpose behind this research...seems like one of those "because we can" things.
      • Of course, when they get to element 118 (in significant quantities), "because we can" would be a perfectly good reason for creating a metalloid noble gas.
        • According to the periodic table that is linked in the summary, it seems as if 118 HAS been discovered (created?). Whether the sample lasted long enough to test any of the properties is another story. What I'd be interested to see, is whether there is any work on creating stable large elements. I'll admit my chemistry knowledge is probably 7 years our of date at best, but wasn't there talk at one time, of elements over 118 possibly being stable (last longer than a few microseconds)? I'd be interested to
          • Well, as I recall the predicted "island of stability" up around element 118 turned out not to be all it was hoped to be. The elements around there seem to last a little longer, but not _that_ much longer.
            • Actually, I believe the island is predicted to be elements around 118 or so, but with more neutrons. Right now they can't get the number of neutrons high enough. The problem is that most elements have a near 1:1 proton-neutron ratio. If you ram two of them together to make a heavier element you still end up with a 1:1 ratio. They're trying to come up with ways of getting more neutrons into the mix.

              And the halflives of the heavier elements have been trending upwards as predicted - some have half-lives i

          • it seems as if 118 HAS been discovered

            Yes, it had been discovered. It took months of measurements, and in the end they claimed to have three magnetic tapes, each of which held exactly one such discovery.

            However, when others asked to see the data, they appeared to have been erased, because the tapes were accidentily left on an accellerator magnet.

            I don't think anybody believed this story, and now scientists commonly agree on it that it was not discovered.

      • How bout
        "Nobodybutfiziksgeekscareanymoreium"

        Seriously though, it is important in our understanding of both heavy nuclei physics and stellar astrophysics. That knowledge will not have an immediate benifit that most people can see. Eventaully that understanding will lead to some helpful devices and ideas that most people will go "ah-hah!" about. But inbetween breakthroughs we are inching along to set ourselves up for the next a-hah! moment.

        As an example Americium (element 95--artifcially produced) is use
        • Eventually there is some hope (and theory) that stable elements will be produced in the 115-120 atomic number range. Its hard to say exactly what hard "benefit" will come

          Hey - most stable elements have a use of some sort. And if you find some superheavy element with a 100 year half-life, I'm sure there will be a use for it - it could be manufactured on a macroscopic scale for sure. If nothing else it lets you study the physics of large concentrated masses in small spaces (relativity has a big effect o
      • I think "Nobodycaresanymoreium" would be a great name for element 111...seems like one of those "because we can" things

        How about "Nameinthesnowium"? Same category.

      • > how many samples of 111 exist in non lab enviroments?

        none, the same number that exist in lab environments... do you have any idea what sort of half-life these elements have?

        It's fundamental research. Seeing what is possible and learning about the basic laws of the universe... There might be some application in the distant future, but i doubt it would be very directly related to this reasearch...
      • I'm personally waiting for "unobtanium" and "cantaffordium"
      • I mean seriously, how many samples of 111 exist in non lab enviroments? For how long?

        First answer - 0. Second answer - VERY little time. Maybe a hundred milliseconds or so.

        But, half-lives are trending upward as we approach the predicted island of stability.

        See this very informative link [acs.org] from Chemical and Engineering News's 50th aniversary edition. (It of course annouced the naming of 110 a few weeks ago - it isn't breaking news.) In it they have a table which shows some of the heavier isotopes of t

      • I am confused by the purpose behind this research...seems like one of those "because we can" things.

        The first wheel was probably used for pottery. The person using it must have been an uber-geek. Making pots isn't much more efficient with a wheel, they only look a bit nicer (to us, I'm not even sure if the people back then thought so.

        If someone would have asked the purpose of his or her invention, the answer certainly wouldn't be that in the future people could make clocks with it.

        Some research is

    • I was sort of hoping they'd never get around to giving 111 an official name. Unununium (Uuu) is just too good to get rid of.
    • But will SCO will claim that element 111 infringes on their IP and insist that it's called darlscotium?

      And will RMS insist that this new element is GNU/darmstadtium?

      HH (in a weird mood, waiting for g/f to arrive)
      --

    • How about Pentium?

      Prototype Element with No real use.

      Oh wait........

  • Wondeful... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cyno01 ( 573917 ) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Friday October 10, 2003 @02:19PM (#7184884) Homepage
    I think i'll go play a game of half life to celebrate.:p
  • This guy got screwed over [theodoregray.com], yet again.

  • population: tire (Score:3, Funny)

    by cloudship_tacitus ( 709780 ) on Friday October 10, 2003 @02:21PM (#7184893)
    i will not rest until the naming of strongbadium, an element in the burninating gasses.

  • I'm just waiting... (Score:3, Funny)

    by ENOENT ( 25325 ) on Friday October 10, 2003 @02:25PM (#7184913) Homepage Journal
    for scientists to discover adamantium, omnium, and unobtainium.

  • Element: Slashdotium found (Score:4, Funny)

    by phunhippy ( 86447 ) * <zavoid&gmail,com> on Friday October 10, 2003 @02:27PM (#7184918) Journal
    The IETF has just announced discovery of the 31337th element named Slashdotium. This new element has perplexed engineers for many years now as it seems to simply appear out of nowhere and bring poor websites to their very knee's then dissapearing just as fast. Even stranger is the occasional apparent repeats that happen once in a while. Engineers theorize that the Slashdotium element hits some web sites twice at a rate of about 1 in 9. They are still trying to find out what is causing the repeated appearence of Slashdotium to the same site twice and one radical engineer believes its related to the element dumbasseditorium.
  • milla jovovich would have been great to discover
  • that element 110 is now Darmstadtium.

    "Damn straightium it's Darmstadtium!"

  • Name for elem. 111 (Score:3, Funny)

    by nacturation ( 646836 ) <nacturation AT gmail DOT com> on Friday October 10, 2003 @02:30PM (#7184939) Journal
    I think an apt name for the 111th element is Binarium.
  • Un-obtain-ium: Name for element 110 on the periodic table. decays so rapidly you never see it.

    • > Un-obtain-ium: Name for element 110 on the periodic
      > table. decays so rapidly you never see it.

      Ugh. Don't remind me of "The Core". The joke was funny when the guy first said it, but it got old REAL fast. Besides, would someone like to explain to me how this magical Unobtainium withstands the pressures inherent in the Earth's core, but happily goes to pieces when a nuke blows up inside? The concept of a containment field would have worked WAY better than their In-consistant-ium, IMNHO.
    • Been done - reference:

      Unobtainium [suppliersonline.com].
      The official suppliers website [unobtainium.com]

      and according to Sen. Jeff Bingaman, both Bowman and Doggit [senate.gov] have some of it, and the U.S. is none too pleased.

  • Webelements (Score:3, Informative)

    by Arc04 ( 601196 ) on Friday October 10, 2003 @02:40PM (#7184996)
    www.webelements.com [webelements.com] had it in there for ages (dated 17th March 03), proving they rock.

    So.....for all your printable periodic table needs, go to Web Elements!!
  • Is there some real physical limit for the amount of protons, neutrons, and electrons an atom can have? For example, is it possible to have an atom with 160 protons given the right conditions?

    • Re:Just Wondering (Score:4, Interesting)

      by overbyj ( 696078 ) on Friday October 10, 2003 @02:48PM (#7185042)
      You do reach a point where the nuclear binding force requirement is too much to hold all the protons and neutrons together in the nucleus. The nuclear binding force is necessary to overcome the repulsions of the individual protons in the nucleus. In essence, the neutrons act as mini-buffers between all the positively charged protons but after a certain number, the repulsive forces become greater than the nuclear binding energy. This energy requirement is why as you move from "lighter" radioactive elements such as uranium to darmstadtium, the half-lives decrease exponentially. Uranium isotopes have half-lives measured in billions of years while I suspect the half-life of element 110 is measured in milliseconds to microseconds. The nuclear binding energy requirement is too great to make a long-living stable nucleus.
    • I was reading about an experiment where they figured that at some point where the number of protons in a nucleus would cause electrons spirialing in to lose 2x their mass in energy. You get something out of nothing at that point and our current understanding of physics kind of breaks down. I do not remember the proton count for this to happen tho.

  • Repost (Score:1)

    by azav ( 469988 )
    Yet another news article that has already been posted on /.

    August 15th to be precise.

    Posted by simoniker on Friday August 15, @03:38AM
    from the soda-company-to-sponsor-pepsium dept.
    An anonymous reader writes "According to Nature Magazine, chemists will vote in Ottawa, Canada this week, and are expected to approve the chemical element 110's informal moniker, 'darmstadtium', and give it the chemical symbol Ds. The title honors the Laboratory for Heavy Ion Research (called GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany, whe
  • If there's one thing I don't understand - and it's because of my almost complete ignorance of all things chemistry beyond first year college - is why chemists are doing this sort of thing.

    Do new elements like this one have uses in industry, or is it pure research insomuch as the ability for certain elements to exist in nature? Is there a primer for people like me? Is there any theory about which elements -can- exist?

  • ... is this one [scifi.com] by Michael Swanwick.

    And yes, he has Darmstadtium.
  • And here I thought "Ds" would be Darkshadowsium -- the key element to repel TV Vampires.
  • This page requires flash shockwave viewer? Oh please. You can find a much better periodic table, which also doesn't need shockwave, here [maricopa.edu].

  • Curse you Darmstadtium! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Friday October 10, 2003 @02:49PM (#7185047)
    Now the periodic table I have tattooed on my arm is WORTHLESS!
  • They should call this one "The Fifth Element".

  • I could have sworn that read DamnStadium [usatoday.com].

    Which made me think immediately of the Vet (Veterans Stadium [phila.gov] - Philly, PA, USA)
  • Did anyone else read this as Durmstrangium? I guess I have been listening to too much Harry Potter on tape...

    sPh

  • I'm impressed. GSI has already discovered element 111. I've been trying to discover element 79 in my basement with no luck.
  • Element 111 has to be named Wolfensteinium.

    It just has to be.

    No, really, it does.

  • Wer sagt dass der alte Ludwig nicht im voraus wusste wofur seine Landesmanner fahig seien wurden?
  • Am I the only one who saw "darnstadium"?

    You'd think they'd choose something that'd not look like another word, much less a phrase. :)
  • Who cares if they discovered it or just got around to naming it...What's it good for? What reactions can I do with it? Can it be used for catalysis? medicinal purposes?

    Element 115, Ununpentium, is very useful. Look for yourself:

    http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/element115.htm l
  • Can someone place some sort of explanation here about why the electrons in an atom do not spiral into the nucleus? Classical grade school education states that protons are positively charged and electrons are negatively charged, so what prevents some level of attraction between the two? This would especially be relevant to elements like Ds where the nucleus is so huge. I know that the mass of electrons are also many times smaller than that of protons or neutrons and that they whizz about the nucleus, but
    • My glib answer was because they are orbiting, but then why doesn't the orbit decay?

      So I did some Googleing. Here [cartage.org.lb] they say "The real reason electrons don't fall into the nucleus is that they are not electrically-charged bodies orbiting the nucleus but are electric charges that come from the nucleus, negative electric charges that have a small mass but are not actually matter. They spread out in various directions from the nucleus, forming the regular patterns that underly the crystal structure of all large-
      • Just to whore some more Karma (and to show how little work I'm doing), here is another interesting quote

        Many of us may have learnt about Bohr's atom model, with electrons orbiting around a central nucleus. Actually, this model has already been abandoned by conventional physics, which is a step in the right direction. In the current understanding of the atom, an orbital is not something like the orbit of a planet around the sun. It is a probability distribution in space. And, the electron cannot be said t

        • I seem to be talking to myself, oh well.

          I just need to add a disclaimer that after reading more of the content on the link I provided above (to bel.150m.com), I'm not convinced of the reliability of that website. Interesting reading, but doesn't seem authoritative.

          That's what I get for linking to something too quickly.
  • Whenever I hear any of the higher elements mentioned, I think of a pretty insane conspiracy theory out there. I don't expect to be modded informative for this, but I think the story is worth a couple funny mods. ;)

    I learned about this by watching an interview on a "Sightings"-like show where someone claimed to have worked at "Area 51" years ago.

    His story was that UFO sightings are due to experimental antigravity aircraft that the military is testing out. He claimed that these craft created an antigr

  • Did anyone else read it as darn stadium?

    What happened to nice, short names? Hydrogen, Xeon, Silver, Darmstadtium - one of these doesn't quite fit. I guess there was no word in old latin for element 110...
  • I just discovered an excellent little app called Kalzium in my RH9 distro, and what do I see featured on /. ?

    It currently lists element 110 as Ununnilium.

  • goatsecxium
    allyourbaseium
    torvaldsium
    alanco xium



  • ImagineABeowulfClusterOfThesium

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