Physics news

[Henry J]

Livermore scientists team with Russia to discover element 118

Scientists from the Chemistry, Materials and Life Sciences Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in collaboration with researchers from Dubna, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Russia , have discovered the newest superheavy element, element 118.

(It's elementary! Now if only somebody can back up and discover number 117. )

Update to webelements for number 118

[Xjmt]

That don't count if they used my scale. My scale always reads too high!

[brian]

Let me know when they find an element that tastes like potatoes but has the nutritional value of broccoli.

There's gotta be one out there.

[Xjmt]

Maybe that's the # 117 Henry's looking for!

[Rstegman]

I've got to change a lot of my story ideas. I've always used element 118, though I never said that was what it was, as the element that is turned into a bose/einstein condescent and accellerated to near light speed in an accellerator in order to cause all sorts of wierd things, usually opening new universes, to happen for the story event.
I presumed it would be extremely stable since it was in the noble gas classification, which tend to be stable. I had never even looked to see what was known on the periodic table in the past decades so I just assumed that a whole line of atoms were not yet known. 1205.19 miliseconds from element 118 ununoctium to element 116 seaborgium is not as stable as I hoped.

[Xjmt]

And that's just one reason I've always been so impressed by SciFi writers proven correct on their assumptions even if it took 20 or 30 years later.

Just in case maybe you should wait 30 years or so before making changes.

[Henry J]

Five of the noble gasses are stable, Rn (86) and Uuo (118) aren't. Is anything from 86 up completely stable? (Course, whether it's a noble gas isn't relevant to nuclear stability, since "noble" and "gas" are determined by the electron arrangements, and nuclear stuff by the protons & neutrons.)

[Xjmt]

That and $8 will get you into the movies.

[Henry J]

A, the movies - a place where all the particles are stuck to the stuff on the floor, so ya don't haf ta worry about 'em.

[Xjmt]

Ah yes, there be no "out of orbit" experiences once seated in the movie theater no matter how badly you have to go.

[Rstegman]

Well, I can always hope that they start a new row of elements and something stable is found there. Invisibillium or Idiocidum.
I don't think I ever specified the exact atom used, so I guess I am still safe.

The main concept I worked from was to choose something that did not exist at the moment, and give it properties that COULD but not likely have. It was basically, "well prove me wrong" things.

I still have a chance. They have only come up with a few atoms. Wait until they can create the atoms at a rate where they can even try to make the Bose / Einstein condencent. Maybe their property is to merge together in those few miliseconds before they break down and then become stable for some reason.

The idea of writing a story set in the far future for science fiction, is that it is a lot harder to disprove right now.

[Xjmt]

60 Second X-ray lasers…

…will be the next generation of light source. They will deliver extraordinarily intense beams of X-rays in very short bursts that are ten billion times brighter than those in any other light source. They will find applications in sciences ranging from new material design to astrophysics research to drug development as scientists use the lasers to reveal molecular structures never seen before.

X-rays lasers are driven by high-current, high-energy electron beams such as those produced in linear accelerators. Wiggling back and forth between rows of magnets called undulators, the electron beams emit coherent bursts of X-rays. The first generation of X-ray lasers is currently under construction in Germany (at the DESY laboratory), Japan (at the Spring-8 laboratory), and the United States (at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center).

Applications of X-ray lasers include; making movies of chemical reactions that proceed faster than can be observed in any other way; determining the structure of single molecules or small clusters of molecules that cannot be examined with less intense sources; and producing and studying new states of matter called warm dense plasmas, similar to what might exist in the interior of stars and other astronomical objects.

Herman Winick, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center/Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory

As quoted in Symmetry magazine A joint Fermilab/SLAC publication

[DonaldTurner]

I've got to change a lot of my story ideas. I've always used element 118, though I never said that was what it was, as the element that is turned into a bose/einstein condescent and accellerated to near light speed in an accellerator in order to cause all sorts of wierd things, usually opening new universes, to happen for the story event.
I presumed it would be extremely stable since it was in the noble gas classification, which tend to be stable. I had never even looked to see what was known on the periodic table in the past decades so I just assumed that a whole line of atoms were not yet known. 1205.19 miliseconds from element 118 ununoctium to element 116 seaborgium is not as stable as I hoped.

You might go with element 126. My understanding is that they expect element 126 to have a very long half life.

[lswot]

long half life

Uh.....isn't that contradiction of......something?

[Xjmt]

Contradiction? Nah! A contradiction would be, "Only a little pregnant".