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Science

Element 118 detected 75

Posted by Hemos from the there-it-is dept.
Hermann wrote to us with the news that the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has isolated element 118, and it's immediate decay product, element 116. Check out the technical details as well as the 88-Inch Cyclotron used.
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Element 118 detected More

Element 118 detected

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  • Uhm.. It IS called aluminium. That's also the normal name in lots of languages. But the scientific name of an element isn't always the same as the daily used name of the element in any particular language.

    Hint: The names are latinized. Don't expect them to be the same as what you prefer to use when you speak English.

  • I think we should wait to see if that element actually is stable. If its stays around long enough to build macroscopic objects out of we can call is Linuxium otherwise NTium would be more fitting.
  • Posted by DDupree:

    A uranium atom splitting into all sorts of other atoms equals an atomic reaction.....just add enough uranium to reach critical mass.......... and you have a nice firecracker
  • I think the problem with that "simple" method was that elements were being discovered separately at relative synchronous times.

    In paticular, in Russia and the USA in the early 80's. All the work done then was considered top secret, due to the Cold War. Once one country publicly announced the discovery of an element (with their name), it was no longer considered a secret, and the other country would announce that they actually found it already, and gave it their own name. They may or may not have, but there was no trust between the two nations, so it was irrelevant anyway.

    And of course, the names themselves were politically motivated (or at least nationally connected), which caused more problems, since the Russians could not accept e.g. Californium, while the Americans couldn't handle Stalinium (not real). So the researchers in each country kept using their own names, while duking it out in the international science foundations for the ultimate naming rights. Meanwhile, all the research that was being done was written up with different names for the elements, and mass confusion was present.

    So the afore-mentioned international science foundations said "screw all of you", and came up with a generic naming convention, and no one got to name the element. The naming became consistent, and neutral scientists danced the happy dance. Then the Cold War ended, scientists everywhere became much more open, and we're left with a silly naming convention.

    Quite simple, really.
  • Given that it breaks after a millisecond... 116 Micro$oftium 117 Windozium 118 NTium
  • ...in the "classic" light-water US reactors, U-235 was the only desired product and U-238 was the only left over (besides the trans-uranic wastes and such). With the newer style of IFB breeder reactors, we convert U-235 to plutonium, thereby "breeding" more fuel (U-238 is not used at all in a breeder reactor). However, the initial plutonium is turned into U-235.
    Wrong on multiple counts.

    U235 fissions easily with slow neutrons, and is the "classic" reactor fuel. U238 captures slow neutrons, and then beta-decays first into Neptunium-239, then Plutonium-239. Plutonium-239 is itself fissionable, and is the bulk of fuel for breeder reactors.

    Given lots of breeder reactors, Plutonium-239 is much easier to come by than purified U235 (which requires massive industrial facilities to separate), hence the arms control weenies don't like it (and don't like breeder reactors).

    Very fast neutrons (such as those produced by deuterium-tritium fusion) can cause U238 to fission, hence the construction of the "multistage" fission-fusion-fission structure used for the really high-megatonnage bombs: a "shaped" fission explosion squeezes and heats up the deuterium/tritium core, which fuses and releases lots of very fast neutrons, which then cause the outer U238 jacket to fission. Nasty devices!

    All of this is relatively-accessible public info; I'm not giving you the numbers for neutron cross-sections, though. :-)

  • Onehundredeighteenium is my vote.

    Although, MS could just donate $10billion to the lab, and they could name the heaviest element after the heaviest OS: NTium.

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
    -jafac's law
  • Only if they can figure out a way to make it less stable.
  • The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry is the ultimate arbiter of such things... Ess
    Right now elements 116 and 118 are named with rather non-aesthetic and rather litaeral names ("the 116th element" and "the 118th element." Presumably, the lead investigator will get to pick a more exciting name later. I would be dissapointed if the paper was delayed in publication because the primary investigator couldn't think of an apt name.
  • IUPAC is to be disregarded and possesses no special powers to name elements. Stuff like this is the epitome of how science has become a bureaucracy of rules, regulations, red tape, and political wrangling, than about actually expanding human knowledge. IUPAC decides on conventions. If you want to adopt your own names for chemicals, you can. Just don't expect to be understood. Personally, I find their system to be preferable to learning millions of proprietary names. In addition, it's nice to know whether to call whether Dubnium refers to element 104 or 105. By the way, IUPAC admits that its recommendations carry no legal force [ourpla.net]. And their system is certainly preferalble to that of Ludwig Plutonium [mcc.ac.uk]
  • I found the following paragraph inserted in the middle of the otherwise pure-science press release amusing:
    Noting that four members of the discovery team are German citizens, U.S. Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson, whose department funded this work said, "
    This stunning discovery which opens the door to further insights into the structure of the atomic nucleus also underscores the value of foreign visitors and what the country would lose if there were a moratorium on foreign visitors at our national labs. Scientific excellence doesn't recognize national boundaries, and we will damage our ability to perform world-class science if we cut off our laboratories from the rest of the world."
    #soapbox mode on

    All I can say to this BS is:

    Visitors are fine - spies are not. And there is no excuse for your criminal failure to act on the information given to you about a major breach in national security,
    Mr. Richardson.
    #soapbox mode off
  • Is this the same Element 118 that the folks at NNL use to power the sphere? If I remember correctly, the said something about getting it from the Roswell crash.

    Hey, now we can time travel :)
  • Atomic mass rarely has much direct effect on the structure and chemical properties of an element. For example, Radon (symbol RN) has a higher atomic mass than lead, but it's a gas.

    After a quick glance at the periodic table, we see that element 118 lines up right underneath Radon, in that pesky Noble Gas column. So even if it were possible to create macroscopic quantities, it would most likely have the same sort of properties as the other noble gasses (helium, neon, argon, &c.); that is, it would be a gas at STP.

    Gases typically make very poor bullets of any sort. Unless you consider flamethrowers (but since noble gasses are highly un-reactive, this is pretty much right out, too.)

  • All of this is relatively-accessible public info; I'm not giving you the numbers for neutron
    cross-sections, though. :-)


    That's OK, I'll look them up in my books....

  • criminal failure? gee, were you napping during the "due process" section of your civics class?

    first, molly ivins made a comment that a nation that spends 25 to 35 billion dollars a year spying on other nations is not really on a moral high ground about spying. methinks you're mistaking "getting up on a soapbox" with "crawling out from under a rock."

    second, what does the word echelon mean to you?

    and lastly who ever said brilliant physics discoveries were only within the domain of us scientists? for all you know china was spying on you guys to see why your spies were getting from them.

    your mr. richardson was right. cooperation, not fear-mongering, is more appropriate in the scientific arena.

    what right-wing america will do to find an excuse to bash clinton apparently knows no bounds. hopefully the american electorate - on all sides of the fence - will see past all these mindbogglingly idiotic attempts to throw mud rather then deal with any real issues.
  • Eheh, this doesn't really have anything to do with bill clinton, nobody would take it _that_ seriously except for some really wacked out conspiracy theorist ... not that they don't happen, but this is a little too far.

    But I wouldn't count on the "American electorate" doing anything differently than they do now. As the philosopher Marcuse and the linguist Noam Chomsky both point out, we have a rather one-dimensional system here in the US of A, where there are only ever black and white types of choices, but even worse, our "choices" all just seem kind of the same. Big corporate-sponsored Republican or big corporate-sponsored Democrat? What is the difference?
  • I know it isn't from aliens or UFO's, but Elerium-118 is so well-commed already...

  • Bob Lazar said that element 118 was used to power the alien spacecraft he worked on at Area 51.

    I think that was element 115. Speaking of element 115, did we ever create it or did we just skip ahead to 118?

  • Don't get me wrong, I'm a nerd too (in my own little ways), but am I the only one who didn't understand this? Then again, i'm only 14 and my college classes don't go into that type of science.
  • After all those ridiculously named elements, a resolution was passed to name future elements based on their weight or something, if I'm not mistaken.
  • Actually, they're numbered first, named later. IUPAC has recommended names for most of the recent extremely heave elements
  • Don't get me wrong, I'm a nerd too (in my own little ways), but am I the only one who didn't understand this? Then again, i'm only 14 and my college classes don't go into that type of science.


    Not a problem. Here, if you're interested, is a description of the "magic island" idea and an explanation of why this article is significant.


    Some elements are more stable than others. Lead will remain Lead no matter how long you leave it, but Plutonium will decay over a few thousand years into lighter elements. In addition, there are many types - isotopes - of each element. These all have the same number of protons but have different numbers of neutrons. Some are more stable than others; for instance, Carbon-12 is stable, but Carbon-14 is not. (The "12" and "14" are the total number of particles - protons and neutrons - in the atom's nucleus).


    If you draw a chart of all of the isotopes of all of the elements, a pattern emerges. The chart has element number ("atomic number", the number of protons) as one axis, and "atomic weight" (the total number of particles - protons and neutrons) as the other axis. The stable isotopes form a band running up this chart diagonally, slightly curved.


    Further irregularities are observed. In places, there are large blotches of mostly-stable elements, and in other places there are gaps where the elements are mostly unstable. These blotches are sometimes called "islands of stability".


    Islands of stability happen when the number of protons or the number of neutrons in an atom's nucleus is a "magic number", or close to a "magic number". As you add protons or neutrons to a nucleus, they stack up in "shells" at different energy levels, much as electrons do in an atom. A completely full shell - a "closed shell" - is very stable. The "magic numbers" are the numbers of protons or neutrons required to have the outermost shell of the nucleus "closed" - exactly full. Iron is in the middle of one island of stability, and lead is in the middle of another.


    One problem that scientists have had when trying to produce "superheavy" elements - elements with more protons than any element that we've found in nature - is that elements are less stable the more protons they have. This is why many of the "heavy" elements (elements with many protons) are radioactive. As they climb into the range of elements that have more than 100 protons, the elements get very unstable, so that you barely have enough time to detect them before they decay (or sometimes are left only looking at the decay products).


    However, many scientists hope that there will be another island of stability around elements 116-118. These elements would have "magic" numbers of protons and neutrons, and might live much longer than the other "superheavy" elements produced so far. Some isotopes of them might even be stable. This "island" is called the "magic island of stability", because it's a group of stable or almost-stable elements in the middle of a sea of very unstable elements and isotopes. For many years, scientists have been trying to produce elements that were in this "magic island" to see if they actually are stable.


    This article describes one of these experiments, that has succeeded in producing one of the elements in the "island". Whether it's as stable as hoped remains to be seen. In fact, each of the isotopes of this element will have to be produced to see whether or not the island really is stable.


    Very exciting, for people who follow the quest for "superheavy" elements regularly :). I hope that this gives you a better idea of what the posts here are talking about.

  • Neat. (Score:3)

    by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Wednesday June 09, 1999 @07:40AM (#1858590)
    Great. It will be interesting to see what the half-lifes of elements in the "Island of Stability" end up being. Half-lives of some of the intermediate elements have been milliseconds or longer, but it remains to be seen whether elements in the island will be stable enough to synthesize in macroscopic quantities (not that there's a good reason to do so yet).
  • Depleted uranium is already used in armor piercing shells because their high density per unit volume enables shells to carry far more momentum than standard shells (and therefore makes them harder to stop). Element 118 would work even better.


    I'm not sure that it would. The atomic weight of an element isn't the only influence on its density. The density is determined by the atomic weight, the crystal structure of the element in solid form, and the distance between atoms. The last item (and the middle item, to an extent) is a result of the structure of the electron shells around the atom.


    IIRC, the second row of transition elements had a peculiar property that made atoms in that row very compact. Similar pecularities may exist elsewhere, but IIRC the actinides and following elements weren't particularly dense.


    Osmium is still the densest element IIRC. I'm not sure exactly why uranium is used in shells as opposed to something denser, but it still works. It's dense, stronger than lead, and they have a lot of it left over when they produce enriched uranium (depleted uranium is uranium with less than the usual amount of U235; enriched has more).


    Superheavy elements would be very difficult to produce in significant quantities with known techniques. Shells will probably continue to be uranium for quite a while.

  • A commonly agreed to name for an element that must die. The sooner, with the most viewpoints, the better. How else can you fund 4 more movies?
  • The chemical properties of an element (all that electron shell stuff) don't affect the nuclear properties.

    The force involved in holding a nucleus together (the 'strong' force) is many orders of magnitude stronger than the electromagnetic force.

    So element 118 being a 'noble gas' would have no effect on its decay time.

    Roy Ward.
  • I wish!. Actually, the IUPAC systematic names are just temporary names assigned to the elements. It takes the chemical organizations 20 years or so, but eventually they get real names.

    Yinon
    webmaster, ChemicalElements.com
  • I'm so glad they've ditched those unpronounceable names. As if chemistry weren't tough enough already! And even better than the names is that they've now got some nice two-letter symbols, rather than those three-letter starts-with-a-U symbols that all start to look alike.

    The politics aside ("Seaborgium" is a nice name, but even "element 106" is preferable to "Unnilhexium"), I think this is a big improvement.

    Whaddaya think... 20 years before they get 'round to slapping a "real" name and a proper two-letter symbol onto element 118?
  • I've heard people say that element 115 is supposed to be completely stable. I don't have any idea what they theoretical basis behind this is, or if this idea was thrown out, but I've heard it in multiple places. Can somebody enlighten me?
  • Perhaps Microsoft will purchase the rights to name the new element for marketing purposes. How about Gatesium? Or Microsoft ActiveElement 118?
  • ...until US and Europe and Russia can all bicker "oh, yeah, we discovered it first" and try to name it after an American/European/Russian scientist.

    personally, i think Feynman has a good chance of having an element named after him this time around.

    -krog
  • Gee. I hadn't seen that before. Now it really bugs me.

    --

  • There may be several islands, one of which is under Lead, although I cannot remember the particular element number.

    Perhaps the most interesting possibility is that subatomic structures may permit the existence of something of a buckyball-like structure; a hollow yet stable element structure. It remains to be seen whether such a beast could exist.

    One could examine a neutron star, and should "hallows" exist in the star's structure, then it is likely that a single structure, likely unique, would be atomically extremely heavy, yet stable. How to create something like this remains a mystery, but it is possible that if it is particularly stable, there may be remnants from the early times in the universe.

    On the way to warm fuzzy gas, it's all good.

  • Looks like the 'island of stability' needs a few more neutrons in the mix.
    I was also interested in this little atom smasher of theirs. The article states:
    "In operation since 1961, the 88-inch Cyclotron has been upgraded with the addition of a high-performance ion sources and can now accelerate beams of ions as light as hydrogen or as heavy as uranium. "
    Hmmm... I wonder what an accelerated beam of uranium ions would do when it hit something less massive like plates of steel?
  • Tungsten is sometimes used for armor piercing shells, too, and is marginally more dense. 19.3 g/cc vs. 18.95 for Uranium. I think Tungsten's mechanical properties might not be as good for this purpose as uranium's.

    The other really dense metals, osmium, iridium, etc., are far too expensive.

    In addition to being strong, dense, and having a bunch of it lying around with no better use to put it to*, depleted uranium strikes sparks when it hits metal. Just what you want when passing through an armored vehicle full of explosive shells. I read a book on the Manhatten Project years and years ago, and it described an incident where machinists were filching chips of uranium to use for "flints" in their cigarette lighters. I think I recall that the Misch metal normally used for these was difficult to come by during WWII, and uranium sparks even better.

    Of course, it's also toxic in addition to being slightly radioactive.

    *(Not counting the possibility of someone deciding that breeder reactors are a good idea after all.)
  • Why is it I always get that feeling you get when your favorite shows goes to a commercial when I get to the end of a story on UFOs
  • There's a book by the German science fiction author Hans Dominik [geocities.com]. I couldn't find his books on amazon.com, but I read a couple of his books in German. He writes in the style of Robert Heinlein [amazon.com].

    Amazing! Born in 1872, he had an amazing vision of what might be possible in the future. In his book "Atomgewicht 500", written in 1935, he describes how scientists find that stuff. Scientifically very acurate for that time, and he also describes the plateau effect. Recommended reading for all German /. and Science Fiction fans!

  • The 293/118 produced lasted for 120 S according to the diagram. Does anyone have an estimate for the half-life of 298/118 which would have the "ideal" 184 neutrons?

    Shlashdot: you should add "SUP" to the list of allowed HTML tags!

  • Sure, once you figure out how to create the element, manufacture the shell, transport it to the battlefield, target, fire, and hit within a millisecond or so. ;-)

    V
  • The new elements are called : Ununhexium and Ununoctium. Sorry, no interesting names for the elements, new elements have been numbered rather than named for quite awhile.
  • Not to insult your wife, but if it was named "Millenenium", I would be forced to "go Postal" and kill every single human being involved in the naming of the element, i would then kill myself.

    For the love of whatever God you believe in!!!!
    Its still 1999!! the next millenium, ie 21st Century doestn't start till January First, 2001, thats a year and a half away!!

  • Actually anyone who's played X-COM: UFO Defense would know that 115 is actually called "Elerium 115" and is the powersource for the alien spacecraft.

    I think thats why they chose it for the game cause it doesn't really exist, well it kinda does but...not really.

  • From what I remember, the theory was that around element 116 to 118 there will be a completely stable atom. Like, you can make siding out of it and not worry about gamma radiation. Milliseconds might be more stable than those guys are used to, but it definitly is NOT stable.
    It merely doesn't decay fast enough to count as an explosion.
    Hmmm, it's not an atomic explosion, it's merely Uranium decaying very very fast.

    Later
    Erik Z
  • Nope. . . it's quite a way to the left of the edge of the table where the other nobles live. You have to take the two series from the bottom and insert them in the bottom two rows of the "traditional" tables. Tables aren't usually displayed this way 'cause it's too big and disproportionate to fit on a page cleanly.

    P.S. - I second that vote for slashdotium - ununoctium is just too boring. . .
  • That's what *I* get for not counting. . .

    -sd
  • I just hope Berkeley open a poll to name the new element. Then we can Slashdot them into naming it Slashdotium. :)

    "There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."

  • Checking out my periodic table, wouldn't element 118 be a "noble gas"? All of its electron shells filled? That would prevent the decay though...

    Beware the reactivity of element 119... You thought pure sodium or potassium were bad in oxygen...
  • Hey! I took first year chemistry... I was counting.. :) Take a look at this periodic table [dayah.com].

    Yes, the extra electron shell takes up a lot of elements between 89 and 103, but 118 is a long way to the right of that...

    Isn't there another new electron shell beyond 119/120?

  • Whoops! The n ' and t keys on my keyboard must be stuck. I meant wouldn't... :)
  • As I read the enthralling scientific posting, one thing stuck out in my mind: Every reference to Element 118 was, well, "Element 118". If we strike now, we can petition for Element 118 to be named in our honor!

    I most humbly submit my suggestion for the name of Element 118: Slashdotium.
  • "I'm not sure exactly why uranium is used in shells as opposed to something denser, but it still works."

    The honest-to-god answer, straight from my Nuclear Engineering 101 professor this fall: We've got a shitload of the U-238 left over after normal fission reactors in light-water reactors*, and basically nothing else to do with it.

    *An interesting note--in the "classic" light-water US reactors, U-235 was the only desired product and U-238 was the only left over (besides the trans-uranic wastes and such). With the newer style of IFB breeder reactors, we convert U-235 to plutonium, thereby "breeding" more fuel (U-238 is not used at all in a breeder reactor). However, the initial plutonium is turned into U-235. Because of the mass percentages and the core design, we gain more plutonium then we lose uranium, but we STILL accumulate U-235 as a leftover. Arg.
  • I think "hallows"!="hollows". If there are low energy state nuclear configurations possible then they would likely manifest somewhere in the structure of a neutron star with a crust of iron.
  • I think I just figured out why this library's filters keep me from searching for "linear accelerators"...
  • I may be wrong, but would it not be impossible for a neutron star to have hollowed out areas? The only attractive forces on the neutrons would be gravity (macroscopic level..although necessarily LARGE, these ARE neutrons after all :)and the strong nuclear force. While the strong nuclear force is, well, extremely strong, it has an extremely small radius of influence. The "interior design" work of the star would be done almost solely by gravity, and gravity would eliminate any stable hollow areas.

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