First Superheavy Element Found In Nature 296
KentuckyFC writes "The first naturally occurring superheavy element has been found. An international team of scientists found several nuclei of unbibium in a sample of the naturally occurring heavy metal thorium. Unbibium has an atomic number of 122 and an atomic weight of 292. In general, very heavy elements tend to be unstable but scientists have long predicted that even heavier nuclei would be stable. The group that found unbibium in thorium say it has a half life in excess of 100 million years and an abundance of about 10^(-12) relative to thorium, which itself is about as abundant as lead." I'd also like it known that my spell checker did not know 'unbibium' before today, but it is now one word closer to encompassing all human knowledge.
Island of Stability (Score:5, Informative)
Neat stuff: apparently they've theorized a bunch of these super-heavy elements, they just haven't been observed yet (until now)!
Re:How to predict the stability? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Informative)
Firstly thorium itself is not fissile, but Uranium-233 which can be created from it is. Using thorium for nuclear fuel therefore requires a breeder reactor and associated reprocessing. At the moment this is more expensive than using enriched uranium in light water reactors, but it may change if the costs of reprocessing decrease.
The second problem is the reprocessing itself. The Uranium made from thorium will contain traces of highly radioactive gamma emitters, and current reprocessing techniques are unable to adequately shield the workers from this radiation. There is also very little experience with thorium based reprocessing.
When it comes from nuclear proliferation thorium reactors would need safeguarding just as a conventional reactor would. The main reason is that while thorium itself is not usable in nuclear weapons, the Uranium-233 which is breed from it would be quite suitable. If that were to prove unfeasible it would also be possible to use a highly-enriched U-233 core surrounded by a U-238 breeder blanket to produce Pu-239, used in plutonium based weapons.
Basically if you are going to run a nuclear reactor you will need safeguards to prevent proliferation. This need not be a reason why we can't use nuclear power, it just means we shouldn't give the technology to every dictatorship on the planet that is willing to sign a piece of paper.
Re:names (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Just Unbibium? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is there an atomic physicist in the house? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What kind of a bomb could you make with this st (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Informative)
Thorium isn't fissile, so it's not just a matter of swapping U for Th.
Current fission reactors are based on same chain reaction that makes nuclear weapons work. Some people want to breed Th into U to keep using these reactor designs, but the cool thing about Th is that you can use it in a subcritical accelerator-driven system [wikipedia.org]. This is a truly safe form of nuclear reactor - pull the plug and the reaction stops, no way that it can melt down. It can actually "burn off" nuclear waste. And because no plutonium is created and the mix of uranium isotopes it produces is hard to weaponize, it's proliferation resistant and not a terrorist target the way a conventional plant is. Thorium is much more abundant than uranium, and easier to mine and process.
If fission has a future, it's accelerator-driven systems. We ought to be putting our reasources toward funding the R&D needed to deploy them instead of building dirty and dangerous uranium or plutonium fission plants.
Re:Just Unbibium? (Score:4, Informative)
Single molecules. and nuclei, as conditions allow are detected all the time in mass spectrometers - thats what they do.(actually quantum efficiency of commonly used detectors are not that sensitive and will detect maybe 1 out of every 10 or 100 particle that comes its way - but it takes one lucky particle to make the signal.)
In mass spec, 292 is a common 'background" signal when analyzing organics- most likely from plasticizer - but could be something else. There was no description of the equipment that they used or whether they were detecting singly charged (or - unlikely - the nuclei fully stripped of electrons)
Great discovery if it is what it is.
Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Informative)
Most people don't even know that the lakes and oceans poisoned with mercury and those tuna advisories are all thanks to coal power plants. But then we better have coal or even the so called "clean coal" instead of nuclear power.
Re:Just Unbibium? (Score:2, Informative)
Additionally, the authors make a binding energy argument. As a consequence of relativity, two molecules with the same number of protons, neutrons and electrons (2-butyne and 1,3-butadiene, for example) will not possess exactly the same mass because one stores more energy than the other. The extra "weight" from the energy stored in a single nucleus as compared to the lesser energy stored in a multi-nucleus molecule makes the single nucleus more massive on the order of .03 amu. The equipment used, which WAS specified in the article, should be precise enough to distinguish these mass differences (Vendor Website [thermo.com]).
To a non-expert, the experiment looks sound, but I'll believe it once it gets off the arXiv and into a peer-reviewed journal.