Element 114 Verified 142
ExRex writes "A team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has observed the production of superheavy element 114, confirming the results of researchers at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia. Those researchers first reported producing element 114 in 1999. Such independent verification is important, particularly given the evidence of fabricated results for other superheavy elements. If you're a subscriber to Physical Review Letters, you can download the full article."
The Russians found it? (Score:5, Funny)
126 is Kryptonite (Score:4, Interesting)
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114? Wow man... (Score:2, Funny)
That's HEAVY.
Re:114? Wow man... (Score:5, Funny)
That's HEAVY.
There's that word again; "heavy". Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the earth's gravitational pull?
It's the LHC... (Score:2)
While the hole they made wasn't black, it was very very dark. And heavy.
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It's a white hole.
(So what is it?)
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Why the need to 'discover' the elements? (Score:1, Funny)
We already know how many electrons and protons there are gonna be -- why not just publish the formula and the basic properties like Mendeleyev used to do?
Re:Why the need to 'discover' the elements? (Score:5, Informative)
mostly because the fun information these days isn't related to the number of electrons but how stable the atoms are, which helps theories that describe how stable the elements should be to be verified.
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In theory wouldn't anti-helium be more stable than anti-hydrogen. It being a noble anti-gas and all that.
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In theory wouldn't anti-helium be more stable than anti-hydrogen. It being a noble anti-gas and all that.
Chemically, yes, anti-helium would be more inert than anti-hydrogen. Mutual annihilation isn't a chemical reaction, though.
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First of all I'm not sure what you mean by formula, and as for the basic properties, they mostly all come down to the half-life.
Re:Why the need to 'discover' the elements? (Score:5, Funny)
You put some protons in,
and pull some neutrons out,
then you toss in some electrons,
and you shake it all about.
You publish real quick just in case your funding is in doubt.
And that's what it's all about!
Tip your waitpeople, I'll be here all week!
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Bravo, good sir, bravo!
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"Waitpeople"? For real?? Is that "political correctness" (=being pathetic) gone horribly wrong?
Wanna know what will fuck with your head in that case?
The question: "What? Are men too good to call themselves 'waitresses'? Do they think they are something better?"
MUHAHAHAHAAA... ^^
Re:Why the need to 'discover' the elements? (Score:5, Informative)
Iron Oxide is not the degradation of the iron atom but the binding of the molecule to Oxygen. In fact, nuclei of the iron atom has one of the highest binding energies per nucleon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Binding_energy_curve_-_common_isotopes.svg [wikipedia.org]
To the right of the apex in the chart above, fission is the process to release energy. To the left of the apex, fusion. At the apex, one of the elements you will find is iron. To make a long story short, this chart is one of the reasons why you find iron cores in stars.
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Leave both in a vacuum and see which one lasts longer. There's a very clear definition of atomic stability that is markedly different from chemical reactivity.
Re:Why the need to 'discover' the elements? (Score:4, Funny)
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just great. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:just great. (Score:5, Funny)
...yes, that's why it's called a periodic table: every now and then you need to replace it. Otherwise it would have been called a permanent table. :)
Re:just great. (Score:5, Funny)
...yes, that's why it's called a periodic table: every now and then you need to replace it. Otherwise it would have been called a permanent table. :)
No, it's because some people get all PMSey when you change one little thing.
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Re:just great. (Score:5, Funny)
Here ya go. [cslacker.com] This one's guaranteed to never need updating. :)
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Mine goes to 128. So it's still good for some time. :)
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"Natural elements", "Possible elements", WTF? And how much are you willing to be on, for example, element 114 never having been created in a supernova?
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But what about Element 115? (Score:5, Funny)
Fine, fine, element 114 has been verified. Now, if they could just get a move on with element 115, we could make our UFO Power Sources work and finally get those Firestorms into the air. We're practically defenseless against the sectoids!
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Damn I loved that game. Link [xcomufo.com] for those of you who don't get the joke, now go play it in DOSbox.
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To this day I have nightmares about the Chryssalids. It's like an Alien Zombie apocalypse rolled into one nightmarish black killing machine. Science can't save us, nothing can save us, we're doomed, DOOOOOMED!
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To this day I have nightmares about the Chryssalids.
I remember my first Chryssalid encounter; it was at a mall Terror-site. My units had laser pistols and no armor, and there were zombies all over. "Weird", I thought, then I shot a zombie at point blank range. Oops.
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let me guess, you second encounter with them involved lots and lots of firebombs, and no civilans alive?
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We already have element 115: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ununpentium [wikipedia.org]
But it was uninteresting.
Personally, I'm drawn to The 5th Element.
http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/thefifthelement/ [sonypictures.com]
Yes, especially the 5th...
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[joke about Boron]
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[joke about Boron]
I know the intent was based on the actual periodic table, but it is used in a cult movie I need to mention. I think even on slashdot it might be a bit obscure movie: Gamers: Dorkness Rising [imdb.com].
It is a movie about gamers (mostly the in game adventures their characters are having) and the players social interactions. It is an indy film and is very good. I attend GenCon every year and get to see many of these kinds of films and it is one of the best.
The full quote from the film (if I can fully remembe
Element 119 (Score:2)
What we really need next is Element 119 [wikia.com] ;-)
Odd (Score:2, Informative)
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Why cheat? (Score:2)
Didn't the team that falsified the info about 114 and 116 come from Lawrence Livermoore
What is the chain of thought that leads researchers to that level of fraud? Eventual exposure and disgrace is always the most likely outcome.
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Yeah, but until the exposure and disgrace the get to use their new found Science Street Cred and massive fame and accompanying financial rewards to score with uber-hot Science Groupies.
Right?
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And why is this important? (Score:1)
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Some isotopes of them might be stable. The properties of these stable isotopes might be desirable. Imagine if we found an exotic super-heavy element that was stable and easy to fission? We might be able to work it into the nuclear reprocessing chain and squeeze some more energy out.
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Yeah you might be able to make Helium fuse. I can't wait. On the upside I probably wouldn't see it coming.
Re:And why is this important? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And why is this important? (Score:5, Funny)
Why do you think people are searching for very large prime numbers?
The nookie.. obviously.
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And that's why I want to be a mathematician. For the ladies!
They love it when I integrate with them. And months after that, we'll derive!
And years later, we'll try to figure out why nothing has changed.
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Those "islands of stability" have been predicted long time ago. What I don't understand is why those researchers do not try to make those elements, instead of the intermediate ones.
Afaik making those superheavy elements is done by fusing lighter ones. Not by building them up brick-by-brick (or proton/neutron by proton/neutron). So I wonder why not just go for the ones that are predicted to be more stable? Is there something we need to know from slightly-less-heavy elements that we can't predict before maki
Re:And why is this important? (Score:5, Informative)
Well it's not like they're purposely missing the target here... They've tried to make isotopes with a higher n/p ratio near the island of stability it's just that it's hard to find two high n/p isotopes to smash together to make a larger one. As you go toward higher elements the n/p ratio needs to be larger to afford more stable isotopes. This means that you'd effectively need to smash two isotopes together that have n/p ratios ideal for higher elements but markedly unstable for lower elements. THen there's the problem that when you smash two isotopes together to make these higher elements, it often knocks out a few neutrons from the composite nucleus due to the sheer high energies involved. This means that you'd probably have to use lower isotopes that have even higher n/p ratios that just don't last very long. (they're very unstable) Of course you'd think that you could just keep adding neutrons or tritium nuclei repeatedly to get higher elements but that doesn't work either as it usually ends up causing a fission reaction. In fact, the vast majority of any reactions attempted so far to produce higher elements has resulted in an inordinate number of composite nuclei undergoing fission immediately. Out of 10^12 reactions, you'd be fairly lucky to find one of them actually producing an isotope of a higher element.
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Probably never occurred to them. We should get rid of these so called experts and replace them with random internauts, taxi drivers and old gits in bars. Thay always have the answers.
Re:And why is this important? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Actually, assuming you are talking about RSA, neither the private key nor the public key is the pair of primes or the product of the primes. The product of the primes is used with both the private and public keys, and the other part of the keys are two related exponents, one made public and one kept private.
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Since all Mersenne primes are of the form 2^p-1, one only need to search p possibilities. Since the largest currently known Mersenne prime is 2^43112609, this is equivalent to 26-bit encryption. Also, since only 47 Mersenne primes are actually known, one could use a simple table search, reducing this to 6-bit encryption. Breaking 6-bit encryption is left as an exercise for the reader.
Re:And why is this important? (Score:5, Interesting)
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So why don't we see those stable elements in nature?
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Just because we don't find them in earth-bound surface-accessible "nature" doesn't mean they don't exist somewhere in the universe - perhaps somewhere out there was a heavier supernova that produced element 114 or higher.
Re:And why is this important? (Score:4, Informative)
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Predicted half-lives are in the order of hours, maybe days. That's why. That's also why many of the lighter elements we can make artificially are not (or barely) present in nature. Think of all the elements used in radiotherapy and so, they also tend to have half-lives in the order of hours or days.
Re:And why is this important? (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps the same reason we don't see astronomically common stable elements like Tellerium.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellurium [wikipedia.org]:
The extreme rarity of tellurium in the Earth's crust is not a reflection of its cosmic abundance, which is in fact greater than that of rubidium, even though rubidium is ten thousand times more abundant in the Earth's crust. The extraordinarily low abundance of tellurium on Earth is because during the Earth's formation, the stable form of elements in the absence of oxygen and water was controlled by the oxidation and reduction of hydrogen. Under this scenario elements such as tellurium which form volatile hydrides were severely depleted during the formation of the Earth's crust through evaporation. Tellurium and selenium are the heavy elements mostly depleted in the Earth's crust by this process.
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So space stinks of something like garlic and bad eggs?
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Why don't we see Plutonium or Neptunium in nature? Because despite there being "stable" isotopes with half-lives measured in millions of years, the age of the Earth is several orders of magnitude greater than that. Any isotope with a half-life less than about 30 million years would be completely decayed over the current age of the Earth (~4.5 billion years), even if it began as abundant as Iron (nearly 1/3 of Earth's mass) not a single atom would remain today.
The isotopes in the "island of stability" would
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Or the next one :
“The next island is located very far from the first one,” said Oganessian. How far away might that next island be" In terms of numbers on the periodic table, it could lie around atomic number 164, as some theorists predicted, certainly a long way from where researchers are exploring today in hopes of discovering element 120. (from here [physorg.com])
That's what I'm thinking (Score:2)
Then, we get the magical stuff to built space elevators, time machines, and whatnot, right?
All joking aside, you don't know what weird shit is good for, until you have enough of it to play around with to find out, right?
Re:And why is this important? (Score:5, Informative)
---
Nuclear Power [feeddistiller.com] Feed @ Feed Distiller [feeddistiller.com]
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Um... fabricated? (Score:2)
Such independent verification is important, particularly given the evidence of fabricated results for other superheavy elements.
Unfortunately, the article that story is pointing to claiming that it was fraud rather than error has expired from Yahoo's site. Do you have a better link?
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Thanks, I found more details in this paper [ucdavis.edu].
bit late dont you think? (Score:1, Informative)
this guy had time to make a youtube video on the subject
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX-gqFChAyk [youtube.com]
Finally! (Score:2)
One step closer... (Score:1, Funny)
To Elerium-115!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elerium-115
About time! (SF prediction) (Score:3, Interesting)
An old Poul Anderson story, Mirkheim, used a stable superheavy element, eka-platinum, as a Maguffin.
In the novel, the stuff was produced in a supernova. A gas giant planet was walloped by the explosion, blowing away its atmosphere leaving a creamy nougat center very dense rocky core. The heavy elements produced by the supernova were plastered across its surface.
As I recall, the planet's discovery by the galaxy's great powers caused a political crisis and the threat of war. The stuff was highly valued. The one use I recall was a hull plating used by hydrogen-breathing races.
Elerium (Score:2, Funny)
One more to go till we get Elerium-115 [wikipedia.org].
Pics or it didn't happen. (Score:1)
Re:Pics or it didn't happen. (Score:4, Funny)
And if ya' got some time, how about some unobtainium?
You can get pics of hot girls through an easy google image search.
Don't tell the terrorists (Score:2, Funny)
I hear element 114 is highly radioactive.
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I hear element 114 is highly radioactive.
Really? ummm I've been painting my walls with it for years now and nothing bad has happened! makes a great night-light...
This was news 3 weeks ago? (Score:2)
Could of sworn this was up 3 weeks ago on CNN. Slow news day?
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you must be new here. half the stories on here end up like that
Naming? (Score:2)
>
A human element (ha!) (Score:4, Interesting)
I was pleased to read that Heino Nitsche is one of the project's lead researchers. His general chemistry course at Berkeley was very informative and enjoyable (and not just because he has a German accent and glorious mad scientist mustache [lbl.gov]); I've yet to meet someone who can get that excited about chemistry at 9 a.m. :)
I still remember a story he told us during the unit on radioactivity and nuclear decay. One of his cats, sick with cancer, was treated with radioactive I-131. After the cat "cooled off" at the vet hospital, Heino took him home, nursed him back to health, and, like a true scientist, measured the cat's radioactivity every morning with a Geiger counter. Sure enough, the measured decay curve strongly matched the predicted one. The cat lived for several more years, too.
If you want a brief overview of the history of heavy element synthesis, especially as it pertains to Berkeley, check out his lecture (47) on the subject [berkeley.edu].
Hey let's put it in the LHC (Score:5, Funny)
Hey let's put it in the LHC and see what hap(&(*%&* NO CARRIER.
Elements Song (Score:3, Funny)
Upon reading the headline, my first thought was "dammit, now Tom Lehrer's Elements Song [wikipedia.org] is even further behind."
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So, we finally have Oppenheimium! (Score:1)
What about elerium-115? (Score:1)
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But only for so long as we can keep shooting down those pesky UFO's! Nothing a few Firestorms and an Avenger can't fix, though. =D
Re:What about (Score:3, Informative)
elerium-115?
I thought the official name of element 115 was Ununpentium. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ununpentium [wikipedia.org]
It's listed as Uup on a Dept of Navy periodic chart that was issued in the 1990s.
Robert Lazar discusses applications of Element 115 at his web site: http://www.boblazar.com/closed/gravity.htm [boblazar.com]
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Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)