This…needs…to happen.
Petition signed.
Probably not. I mean, maybe the strong nuclear force happens to work out that way, but the people who know nuclear physics better than I don’t expect it.
It would have to be Z-117, since Z-118 is most likely a non-metal noble gas.
Note that powers of two play some role in electron shell stability, but in a peculiar and complicated way. (See shell numbers for the noble gases.) It’s better to think there’s a preference for being “highly even”. Note that it isn’t the total number where “highly even” numbers appear, but in the max number per shell.
A similar model for shells in nuclei has been proposed, with evenness again playing a suggested role. The result is the oddity of Atomic Scientists discussing “magic numbers”. These values are one of the basis for estimating a possibly island of stability for super-heavy elements.
As to justification for searching for these “useless” elements, note that we have far from solved everything we want to know about Atomic Physics. One way to find out which models are better than others is to search the fringes, e.g., super-heavy elements. If we find stuff that one model predicted, we can then spend more effort on more practical things that model predicts. If we find something no model suggested, then it’s time for a revolution in Atomic Physics which might lead to who knows what kind of amazing stuff.
Incidentally, another fringe where one can test models is in neutron stars. There was one discovered recently (about three years ago, I think) that was measured at twice the mass of the Sun, which ruled out a bunch of models right there (most models predicted a maximum possible mass lower than that).
Well that shows how the “dark matter” “dark energy” calculations are really the result of extremely wild guess work…
Its actually impossible to measure the mass of a galaxy
No, actually, it’s really easy to measure the mass of a galaxy, and I’m not sure what in my post made you think otherwise. And the masses of galaxies are only one way of many of detecting dark matter, and not relevant at all for dark energy.
Yeah, they might have made a stable element, they might have made atoms as stable as uranium, for example. With so many protons, its difficult to get the exactly right number of neutrons to to be stable. The stable line is between beta+ and beta- decay, so there might be the atom there ? So far they predict there won’t be, but they’d have to make ununseptium again and again with a wide range of neutron counts to see if there is a stable isotope (OP incorrectly suggested that ununseptium was a single isotope).
Clinton Nash, 2005, suggests it might not be so,The explanation has all the same words Chronos uses… spin, orbit, pairs, etc
The idea is that the nucleus is so large, the “noble” envelope is pushed… In smaller atoms, the noble nucleus is keeping its electroncs to itsself.
But with a nucleus so large… the outer shell may well behave as metallic… the nucleus isn’t keeping the electrons.
Berkelium has the “use” of being an intermediate step in the making of ununseptium .,etc, …
Suppose that a stable ununsetpium isotope is found, it might be used as ,say, a lubricant in grease. ( Molybdenum is , so why not ? ).
Well then Berkelium could be said to be used in the making of heavy lanthanide grease.
But 126 is expected to be stable, perhaps.
Actually, beta+ decay is quite rare (though there are a few examples of it). Far more common for an element with too many protons is alpha decay. And by the time you get to the ununelements, pretty much everything has too many protons.
A quick primer on nuclear physics: A nucleus is made up of two kinds of particles, protons and neutrons. They’re almost identical except for their charge, which is +1 for protons, and 0 for neutrons. And there are two main interactions between those particles, the electromagnetic force and the strong force. The electromagnetic force mostly just cares about the charged protons, and between them, it’s always repulsive, because they’re all the same charge. It falls off with distance, but only gradually: You can get significant electromagnetic forces even at ranges visible to the naked eye. The strong force, meanwhile, is much stronger than electromagnetism, but only at short range: At a distance of about the diameter of a proton or neutron, it’s so strong that electromagnetism is nearly irrelevant, but if you get much more than that apart, it falls off to almost nothing. Unlike the electromagnetic force, it can be attractive under the right circumstances (never mind what those circumstances are, but if they’re not present, then you’re not going to get a nucleus at all).
For small nuclei, most of the protons and neutrons are right next to each other, or at least only one or two particles removed from each other. So the fact that the protons are repelling each other matters almost not at all, because the strong force is so much stronger. All that matters, then, is that protons and neutrons are two different particles, never mind precisely how they’re different. Because of the Pauli exclusion principle, no two protons can be in the same state, nor can two neutrons… but because they’re different particles, a proton and a neutron can be in the same state with no problem. So the most stable light elements tend to have the same number of protons and neutrons, with the protons being in basically the same states the neutrons are. A surplus of either means that you have some of the “extra” ones forced into a higher energy state, and that tends to interfere with the circumstances that cause the strong force to be attractive.
Once you start getting to the heavier elements, though, you’ve got so many protons and neutrons that they’re not all right next to each other any more. A proton is attracted by the perhaps a dozen other protons and neutrons right next to it, but it’s still repelled by the other protons clear on the opposite side of the nucleus from it. And if you’re large enough, all of those protons far away from you are enough to add up to more repulsion than the attraction from the few nearby ones. And it’s even worse for the protons near the edge, because they have even fewer immediate neighbors. So now, you’ve still got the strong force saying that you want approximately equal numbers of protons and neutrons, and that’s still relevant, but you’ve also got the electromagnetic force saying that you don’t want too many protons. So the most stable nuclei end up having more neutrons than protons (the most stable isotope of uranium, for instance, has 92 protons but 146 neutrons).
As you increase number of particles, you end up with a narrower and narrower margin of stability: Too many neutrons, and the Strong Force complains that the numbers of neutrons and protons are too unequal. Too few, and the Electromagnetic Force complains that you have too many protons too close together. And of course, eventually, you get to the point where your margin of stability disappears altogether: There is no number of neutrons that will leave both forces satisfied. Uranium is past this point, but only just barely: All isotopes of uranium are unstable, but one of them is almost stable, so close that it takes billions of years to decay. Up past uranium, though, it gets much worse very quickly.