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Science

New element produced Z=114 83

Anonymous Coward writes "American and Russian scientists claim to have produced a new element with 114 protons. Apparently this discovery could lead to a new family of superheavy and stable elements. What are these exotic element used for anyhow? No name for this new element has been mentioned. Any suggestions? The article requires Physics World access."
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New element produced Z=114

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  • by ccg ( 34 )
    From www.intercorr.com/periodic/61.htm [intercorr.com]:

    • The element [Promethium] has applications as a beta source for thickness gages, and it can be absorbed by a phosphor to produce light.
    • Light produced in this manner can be used for signs or signals that require dependable operation; it can be used as a nuclear-powered battery by capturing light in photocells which convert it into electric current.

    Well, okay, maybe this isn't all that common; but at least it could be used for something:

    • Such a battery, using 147Pm, would have a useful life of about 5 years.
    • Promethium shows promise as a portable X-ray source, and it may become useful as a heat source to provide auxiliary power for space probes and satellites.

    Cheers,

    ccg

    chad at glendenin dot org


  • I enjoy calling things "gay", and using as many racial slurs as possible, just because I know how stupid it all is. If you judge on those criteria, you're nothing in my book anyway...

    Stupid homo faggot jew nigger kike spic honky chink-gooks with no sense of humour, I say.




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  • Posted by tid242:

    i don't feel like doing more than one reply, so please excuse.

    yes the A-10 [warthog] uses U shells in it's 30mm anti-tank gun, those planes are the shit, the pilot sits in a titanium bathtub to survive ground fire, and the plane is designed to be able to fly around with half it's tail and only one engine, sort of a flying tank.... remember when one got stolen from that AF base down somewhere in S US somewhere? i think they found it crashed into a mountain a week or so later... anyway the point of this is that the M1-A1 (wahtever) Abrhams tank (the ones we used to drive over the branch dividian compount in waco a few years ago, and the ones we used in Desert Storm too) use U for armor.

    "wonder where we make depleted U"

    -it's a byproduct of nuclear reactors.

    just because the elment is heavy doesn't necessaraly mean that it's gonna be incorperated into bullets and armor, depleted U is basically free since it is a byproduct or making enriched U anyway. ???-114 is probably not free nor will it be in the forseeable future since they had to "bombard it for a day and a night" to get any tangable amounts of it. so i wouldnt be worrying abuot health effects any time soon, you'd be better off worrying about real threats to your health like AIDS, Influenza, Malaria. (herpes, not a problem i use VALTREX! actually i just like the "we have herpes but we're fighting it together" commercial i always see :) ) etc etc. they kill a lot more people than U tipped shells being shot at some poor saps in tanks.

    also worthy of interest is [in regards to the US vs Iraq deal] that prior to saddam's invasion of kuwait he specifically asked the US if we would do anything if he started invading his neighbors. we responded before congress by saying something along the lines of "if saddam would invade kuwait for example, the United States would probably turn our backs on the incident. . . " (mind you this is off the top of my head, i saw a documentry a few years back on like CNN or something) and now look, oh, gosh...now we have an excuse to have a couple of carriers and a few subs and several otehr ships floating around the persian gulf and red sea to make sure our oil supply is safe...

    seem fishy? nah, i'm sure a government with as much to lose as America wouldn't to some under-the-table dealings to protect its assets. i mean that's not how buisnesses succede *cough* Micro$lut *clears throat* kinda makes you wonder if the fall of the asian economy might have been not completely "natural" considering indonesia was supposed to have like the biggest sky-scapers in teh world by 2002, and hong kong was supposed to have some of the best research labs in the world by 97/98 hm... that hasn't happened, and America's still pretty much ahead of the game still (note: this is not to say that tons of good shit still doesn't come from europe, japan, russia, etc... but you know what i mean)

    and on a different note KMFDM officially disbanded on jan 22 :( that should have been posted here on slashdot, was it? i was gone.

    the more i open my eyes the less i see.

  • Posted by tid242:

    now just amalgamage the micro-machine idea with the anti-tank shell idea, and WHOOOLAH - you get anti-micro-machine-tank ammunition.

    gosh that would make a great movie like all these military toys that hang around and think and stuff, that'll be a multi-million dollar idea....wait they already thought of it, "Toy Soldiers" --hm....nevermind that idea sucks.

    :)

  • That was element 115, from what I remember. (I looked up his site.)

    His claim is that you get an unstable element, which decays back to 115, releasing anti-matter as one of the decay products.

    This would produce antimatter with considerably less energy than is currently required, if true.

    That he managed to predict the stable island's location so well is impressive, although not conclusive, by any stretch of the imagination. He claims to be a physicist, and so could have worked out this stuff on his own. The implication of that, though, is that some of his other claims (MINUS the UFO aspect) may also be true and worth looking into.

    If he's =that= good a physicist, I don't care if he claims he was told that element 115 was stable by a mulberry bush, whilst sunbathing in the Antarctic! IMHO, the =ONLY= important question, WRT Bob Lazar, is "=IS= he that good a physicist?"

  • I think they took it down, I get "no longer exists" now. Anyone have it in thier cache, I would like to read the whole thing.
  • Nevermind, I got it, all, saved it local, and now can read it, and show to others... I would mirror, but I don't think it's legql.
  • It's supposed to be "ununquadium." The most-recently developed elements have so far been named after the number of protons in their nuclei. Like unnilquadium (104), unnilhexium (106), and unnilpentium (104.99997568... hehe).
  • I thought all of those homo elements after 106 were only like theoretical, or could only be sustained in a laboratory environment for a few milliseconds.. Now this shit says they could lead to a new group of highly stable elements.. Although the stability of the element all comes down to it's charge or the number of electrons in it's outermost level. Oh well, I'm sure there are pleanty of chemical engineers who will tell me what the real deal is.
  • ...and 98 == Californium.

    (Please pardon the momentary humor-impairment.)

  • They are using a material unknown in all Federation records!
  • Pardon my ignorance, but what about 110-113?
    Did they skip those?
  • I think you're referring to Chandrasekhar's constant, named for the Indian dude who "discovered" it.

    Also the name of the guy who built the Hal 9000 in 2001/2010. They shortened it to Dr. Chandra in the movie so they could cast a white guy. (we all know there are NO English speaking Indian actors, right? :-) )
  • >So I wonder where the Americans process their uranium?

    They need energy. Lots of it. Centrifuges also require great underground space, such as used coal mines.

    Look for any mostly undergroud government contractor that hase nice power lines running to it. The type of power lines to look for can run through the city on large metal poles, three phase heavy conductors, with very long insulators. The wires will hold close to the maximum voltage that can be held without escaping into weather conditions.

    Imagine a small complex with a massive security retaining wall using billions of watts. Where does all that energy go? Its used underground. Such a small building would melt if it could use the capacity of that electrical line.

    I know of one such building that uses an inordinate amount of electricity and does not seem to manufacture anything. "We are not involved in weapons production." Any casual observer should wonder what is going on.
  • What's this new element for? Didn't anyone see Stargate? I'm betting the mineral from which the 'gate was constructed was made of ol' element #114. ;^)

    OK, OK, nevermind.

    Kythe
    (Remove "x"'s from

  • Someone makes a new element that's never existed in nature before, and before you know it, folks are designing a better bullet around it. :-/

    I wanna pick myself a new species, this one sucks.
  • The only industrial use of "Man-Made" elements I know of
  • Well, it looked good on paper but tell me has anyone put one of these bad boys together and plugged it in?

  • For those among who speak German or know how to use Babelfish, there is a brief article on this at:

    http://www.vol.at/tmh/zr/na tional/wissen/news-19133.asp [www.vol.at]
  • Does anyone know were I could find more info about this theoretical new stable area?
    --
  • by dido ( 9125 )
    IIRC, this guy was called Bob Lazar, and he claims that if used in a certain way Element 115 produces strong gravity waves that are the basis for the UFO propulsion systems. A gravitational warp drive. Of course, without a quantum theory of gravity there's no way to prove or disprove his statements. Unless Lazar is telling the truth, we have never even observed gravitational waves directly! But if Lazar isn't full of it, it hints of something deeply fundamental, like a complex interaction between all four forces that drive the universe. It will be an interesting story, but why do I get the feeling that we won't be around to see it...?
    --
  • He just based the 115 drive on current physics theories, to make it believable.

    ----
  • 1 million year half-life predicted at the island of stability is not exactly "not radioactive".
    ----
  • slashdotium?
    --
  • what is element 95, anyway? ;)
  • ununquadium?
  • I remember reading the a-10 uses depleated uranium slugs in its 30mm cannon.
  • Has anyone seen any information/speculation on the physical properties this stuff would have?
  • Were still seeing physics like this is the 1960's. No we don't have free energy but, some physics labs are having luck, or at least mesureable results with Zero-Point energy devices, working on EM theory based on Tesla. And speaking of the wacky world of electromagnetics here's theory for a reactionless drive: Reactionless Drive [inetarena.com]. Just because it sounds like Scifi doesn't mean that little green men are at the source of the future. I don't know about antimatter (and why anyone would experiment with it in atmosphere is beyond me, as dangerous as nanotech if we ever get there) but, just because '60's physics can't handle it doesn't mean it can't happen.
  • But, if it is stable it shouldn't be so easily fissionable.
  • Why is this discovery important? If you recall your high school or grade school physical science classes then you're undoubtedly familiar with the electron shell model and its effect in terms of the chemical reactivity of the elements. Nuclear Physics has a similar model where we note that the binding energy per nucleon (ie a proton or a neutron) goes down as the number of protons or neutrons reaches the so called magic numbers. When the number of protons or neutrons reaches the magic number then the nucleus becomes much more stable. If one believes that these magic numbers track for protons and neutrons then the next really stable element will have the proton number 126 (since there is a known island of stability around the number of neutrons equal to 126. As you approach the magic numbers, the nuclei become more stable. No one knows where the island of stability begins for the super heavy elements nor what there properties will be, so it is hard to say what the practical value of this information is. But as a nuclear physicist this is exciting evidence indeed.
  • Can it be used to create a weapon more efficient than a A-bomb?

    Could be the solution for the Iraque-crisis...

  • Just to answer a few questions about the element:

    113 has not been sythesised, but 112 has been. This information appeared in the last issue of Science, and the only information not mentioned is that the atom hangs around for about 30 seconds, which is pretty cool, considering 112 only existed for about 280 ms before decaying into something else.

    About the naming: the element will assume the name ununquadium (as explained at
    http://www.chemicalelements.com/sup/sysname.html) until it is given an official name by IUPAC (assuming there is no conflict between them and ACS, of course).

    For more info about these elements, go to my web site at http://www.chemicalelements.com

    Yinon
  • On the one hand, it may violate conservation of something; unless the energy gained by motion is equal somehow to mass loss/transform via energy density(or the energy lost in the fluctation of the mass)

    At some point a photon transformed from mass to energy, and started to travel at c. If we could do a mass fluctuation large enough, the velocity gained would also be large, I think...

    But the energy needed would also be stupendous...
    Would one 'launch' a propulsionless drive with some initial velocity, and have the drive actually kick in later to decellerate the ship? IE, launch it from space, the earth, or the moon, or an asteroid, so it itself would not need to, but onboard functions would deploy halfway or something to slow down and stop the ship...

    Heck, I wonder if we could also bend spacetime into a well, drop a ship at the lip, and use boosters at the other side to complete the trip, ala a skateboard in a half-pipe =)

    -Twink

"What man has done, man can aspire to do." -- Jerry Pournelle, about space flight

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