Six Atoms of Element 117 Produced 213
mr crypto writes "A team of Russian and American scientists has produced six atoms of a new element, number 117, that has long stood as a missing link among the heaviest bits of atomic matter ever produced. The element, still nameless, appears to point the way toward a brew of still more massive elements with chemical properties no one can predict. The researchers say that the discovery bolsters the idea of an 'island of stability' among still heavier elements."
It has a name (Score:1, Informative)
Ununseptium. It's just not the final name. I think in honor of Lost, it should be called Smokium.
Re:Chemical properties (Score:5, Informative)
Study it for a minute. The chemical properties you speak of are largely represented by the columns. Super-heavy elements would be in the middle, in their own 'new' columns.
Wikipedia actually has an article about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extension_of_the_periodic_table_beyond_the_seventh_period [wikipedia.org]
Re:Should be easier to get agreement on name (Score:4, Informative)
Although a temporary one. Sorry, jumped the gun :)
Re:No name yet (Score:3, Informative)
It cannot be Unobtainium, they already have 6 atoms of it. That was far to easy to be Unobtainium!
Re:Hey chemists (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hey chemists (Score:3, Informative)
The models that exist for the currently known elements seem to work pretty well, but they also predict the island of stability mentioned in the summary. Basically a region of very heavy and very stable elements. So, if these elements are discovered and actually are very stable, then it tells us that the current nuclear models aren't too bad.
Also, and this I'm not positive about, the reason the properties are likely different than the common elements is because these superheavy elements are very neutron rich and very heavy. And I think the most stable ones are supposed to be deformed as well.
What happens when you go outside what's there? (Score:5, Informative)
What I mean is, starting with element 119 you are in to a new, 8th period of the periodic table. Ok well each two periods adds new blocks due to the electron shells. Starting at element 121, you are in that new block. As such there isn't anything to compare it against. You are now dealing with g-block elements, which don't exist in lighter elements.
Re:Chemical properties (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. Not at these atomic numbers.
Outer electrons start to move at appreciable fraction of speed of light, so relativistic effects begin to affect chemical properties.
A good example of relativistic effect - color of gold and copper.
Re:Hey chemists (Score:5, Informative)
Because most of the interesting properties of an element are not defined by the number of protons but by the number of electrons and which orbitals they are found in in the ground state.
The orbitals are not simply layers like a layer cake and they don't fill up in a strictly one-two-three kind of order. The way the lanthanides stick up out of the periodic table is due to the fact that an outer orbital fills in before one of the inner ones does for those elements.
The fact that sodium behaves like potassium is not because of the number of protons for each, for example, it is because the number of electrons to balance those protons results in one electron in the outermost 's' orbital. The atom prefers to get rid of this electron, making the + ion. The inert elements are all due to the fact that they have the right number of electrons to completely fill the outer shell. Chlorine and the elements in that column lack completeness by one electron, so they prefer to pick up one electron and form the - ion.
H2 is stable because the two H atoms share the two electrons, making a complete outer shell. Na2 is not stable, because even though they'd share the outer electron and make a complete 's' orbital, the outer shell of Na has more than an s orbital.
It's all an electron thing, not proton.
Island of stability (Score:3, Informative)
Re:still more... (Score:5, Informative)
> I was thinking of the "unobtanium" in Avatar.
"Unobtainium" is much, much older than that silly movie.
Re:Chemical properties (Score:5, Informative)
More accurately, the classical velocity of the electrons, if you calculate it from Newtonian principles, approaches (or even exceeds) the speed of light. Nevertheless, the electron does not "move" when in a bound state, from a quantum perspective.
It's interesting that even when a less accurate physical theory is technically wrong, it may still have some predictive value.
Re:Hey chemists (Score:5, Informative)
Most of my questions are based on the apparent fact that for any given number of protons in the nucleus, there is exactly one element with that amount.
That's the definition of an element, yes.
If that were true, it would seem that given the number of protons, you would be able to deduce certain properties about the element (if there was only one possible configuration of electrons for a given number of protons).
There is one set of possible electron orbitals, yes, but the problem is that with large elements like this the number of orbitals is very large and their behavior is non-obvious. You can't just look at element 117 and say that oh, the outer-most shell (the one that matters most with regards to chemical behavior) is one electron short of being full in the non-ionized element, so it's going to behave like Florine. There's a lot more going on in this element.
Re:No name yet (Score:3, Informative)
Just put that into Google, and it'll show up highlighted in the searches. Chrome offers to translate the page, so you get it in English too.
Re:still more... (Score:4, Informative)
> perhaps it is the dark matter.
No. Whatever dark matter is, it cannot be baryonic matter of any sort.
Re:still more... (Score:3, Informative)
No, Dark matter isn't a superheavy element, inert or otherwise.
Here's why:
We have some observations of nearby spiral galaxies, that seem to show dark matter. It is revealed by gravitational influences on the visible parts of those galaxies. These include the speed the visible parts rotate at, around galactic centers that are probably supermassive black holes. The speed of rotation doesn't fall off according to the normal square/cube function for gravity, and adding enough conventional type matter to get anything like the observed numbers for motions means that conventional matter would all be trying to fall into the center, not exist as a rather extended cloud that show effects all the way to outside the major arms of the spiral galaxy.
Either we see galaxies of some somewhat differing ages and seriously differing sizes and masses, and yet somehow, all of them have a cloud of normal but unilluminated matter, that is at a particular stage of infall, and all of those galaxies will be past that stage within a very few million years, or else they are surrounded by something that isn't normal matter, and doesn't want to pack down as tight as normal matter, or start clumping enough to shine like stars as normal matter does. Astronomers don't like theories that say we are observing a very statistically unusual and unstable state that just happens to look like a normal condition from our especially privileged viewpoint. Ergo, there's some kind of matter that won't fit on the periodic table no matter how much you extend it.
Now just what other restrictions there are, that's debatable. When dark matter was first proposed, it was supposed to make the whole universe have enough mass that it was just barely, exactly, geometrically flat (that is, it wouldn't expand quite forever, wouldn't have an overall curvature that counted as either 'open' or 'closed', and certain other numbers, such as the Hubble constant, would be exactly enough to give us a universe with what is called an omega of exactly 1). Some theories also proposed a role in this for what was/is called dark energy.
Recent observations of very distant galaxies have revealed a lot of previously unaccounted for normal matter, enough that normal matter may make up much more of the universe as a whole than we thought for about the last thirty years. Maybe that's even enough to mean we don't need much or any dark matter at all to make omega = 1. But, we now have actual observations of what appears to be some kind of dark matter. So even if one of the original reasons for suspecting dark matter existed is invalid, and even if we could be certain there isn't as much of the universe made of dark matter as that reason suggested, now we have to explain the observations that say there is at least some dark matter around.
Re:Chemical properties (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No name yet (Score:1, Informative)
russian for 119 would be:
sto dyevyatnadtsat
Slashdot is irritating in that it doesn't support unicode. Apparently, if 7-bit ASCII was good enough for my father, it should be good enough for me.