[HN Gopher] Previously unknown isotope of uranium discovered
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Previously unknown isotope of uranium discovered
Author : wglb
Score : 77 points
Date : 2023-04-10 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| hrunt wrote:
| I am not a physicist, so I am hoping someone with more
| understanding can explain this to me. Why do we say that we
| "discovered" a new uranium isotope that scientists effectively
| created in a lab under very specific, man-made conditions? How
| come we don't say that we "manufactured" this new isotope? For
| all intents and purposes, this kind of atomic configuration would
| not exist except for man's specific efforts.
| hammock wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_element
| Someone wrote:
| This specific atom was made, but the fact that this isotope can
| exist was discovered.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Because whether or not an element/isotope _can_ exist is a
| property of nature. We have to discover whether it can exist.
|
| Manufacturing implies we can have any element/isotope we want,
| which is not the case. By attempting to manufacture, we
| discover whether manufacture is possible. We discover the
| existence of a new isotope.
|
| Whether an isotope can exist is a property of the universe. We
| similarly discover the speed of light, discover quantum
| mechanics, discover radiation, etc.
| yeknoda wrote:
| More like can exist for an observable amount of time. Can
| smash particles together, and for a tiny moment you can have
| an arbitrary isotope.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Couldn't you say the same thing about cars? You can't just
| manufacture a car that gets 200k mpg. So we discovered a car
| that can get 30mpg. Which we don't say.
|
| Or is it different?
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's different because with properties of the universe, we
| use the word discover.
|
| Cars aren't properties of the universe. Elements and
| isotopes are fundamental enough, though, that we put them
| in that category.
| faktory wrote:
| Great explanation!
|
| This also fixes a misconception that resources is something
| we just find and use.
|
| Resources are properties of nature we discover.
|
| There are lack of resources, only lack of knowledge to help
| discover how we turn things into resources.
| lisper wrote:
| It's a cultural convention. Physicists are not rewarded for
| manufacturing things, they are rewarded for discovering things.
| So even if the process resembles manufacturing, they call it a
| discovery so they can publish a paper.
|
| Alternatively, you could say that "discovering a new isotope"
| is shorthand for "discovering the process by which a new
| isotope can be produced".
| [deleted]
| stathibus wrote:
| The fact that this process leads to the creation of an
| isotope is the interesting part, not the fact that they
| managed to do it.
| bunabhucan wrote:
| It has a half life of 31 minutes which means that whatever
| amount of it gets made in a supernova is reduced by a factor of
| 100 trillion every day.
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| It was discovered that it was something that can be created.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It was likely created in the same process that created other
| isotopes of Uranium (probably neutron star collisions) but
| didn't last very long.
|
| Plutonium was long considered a "man-made element" and it
| mostly is but if you look carefully at natural uranium you will
| find occasionally a neutron hits a 238U atom and winds up
| making 239Pu but it doesn't last long so you find only the
| smallest traces of it.
|
| https://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclide-basics-plutonium
| gonzo41 wrote:
| The conditions of the lab may/probably occur somewhere in the
| universe. Being able to transmutate one element into another,
| or to modify an element by adding more neutrons is useful
| because then we know more and it informs out imagination and
| understanding of what could be.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| The universe is so vast that anything we are able to create
| must exist elsewhere at some time or place.
| mason55 wrote:
| In addition to what other posters have said, I think some of it
| is just historical.
|
| Before we had the ability to manufacture & detect new isotopes
| & new elements, we really did discover them. We could go poke
| around, explore new conditions that we hadn't explored before,
| and sometimes you'd actually discover a new isotope or element.
|
| Imagine you light something on fire, you capture the gasses and
| analyze them, and for the first time in human history you see
| sulphur. Did you manufacture the sulphur? Or discover it?
| Intuitively it probably feels like the sulphur was discovered
| but the uranium in the OP was manufactured, but really it's
| just a spectrum of how much work one needs to do to create the
| conditions that the universe requires to show you the element
| or isotope.
|
| Another interesting language question (IMO) is, once you can
| predict the existence of elements, their behavior, etc., what
| do you call it when you see the physical version for the first
| time? Did the person who first predicted the configuration &
| properties discover it? Did the person who created the physical
| version for the first time discover it? Did anyone discover it?
| Does it matter how much insight was required to make the
| prediction?
|
| Now that we're pretty good at predicting elements & isotopes,
| maybe the better way to phrase it is "discovered a process that
| produces xyz". Or if something unexpected happens, "discovered
| xyz is able to physically exist".
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| I'm reminded of Victor Ninov, who made a career out of
| fraudulently 'discovering' superheavy elements. It's kindof
| the perfect crime, since they were all theoretically well
| understood, you just fabricate a detection of those predicted
| properties. It helps too when you're the only person the
| planet who understands the data-analysis software.
|
| https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/victor-ninov-and-
| the...
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| [flagged]
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I know that a lot of people think HN is humorless, but it's
| not entirely true. This kind of snarky, culture war laden
| humor is unlikely to go over well though.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| You were going to be my first downvote. Instead I'll answer
| in the same vein, but from an opposed political stance, to
| show how ridiculous this is. All ethical stances assert
| various propositions, and defend those propositions by
| pointing out harms (physical, psychological, or imaginary)
| that occur when those propositions aren't followed.
|
| If Uranium-241 was meant to exist in nature God would have
| made it. If Uranium-238 and Platinum-198 were meant to merge
| they would be discovered in the same deposits. Our founders
| fought and died for the right of Uranium-238 to exist, and
| destroying it in this experiment threatens our freedoms.
|
| It's not as good as yours; my critique lacks your
| inspiration.
| danielodievich wrote:
| _applause_
| jcims wrote:
| My favorite are the
| largest/smallest/hottest/coldest/furthest/closest/etc things
| discovered.
|
| Yeah, for now.
| VLM wrote:
| Math proofs are also 'discovered'.
|
| Another interesting thing to think about is cosmic rays are far
| stronger than anything we can create in a particle accelerator,
| but the current flow in an accelerator is a zillion times the
| intensity of cosmic rays, so thats why we build particle
| accelerators to "discover" things that already exist in cosmic
| rays.
|
| Technically there are some atoms of this "stuff" in a lump of
| uranium ore, well, a big enough one, anyway, but it would take
| much fancier instruments to detect and manipulate it, its
| easier to make lots in close proximity to a detector.
| jleahy wrote:
| > Technically there are some atoms of this "stuff" in a lump
| of uranium ore
|
| Given it has a half-life of around 40 minutes and isn't a
| decay product (even via irradiation) of anything that's found
| in uranium ore, I think that's quite unlikely.
|
| It may occur somewhere else in nature, very briefly/rarely,
| however.
| iamerroragent wrote:
| Because the conditions for the universe to allow for this
| configuration of matter existed before man.
|
| Humans, a product of the universe itself, just discovered or
| found a way to configure matter this way.
|
| Great question though and one I like to ponder myself.
|
| Like the logic to describe math itself is put down by humans
| but that that logic is able to exist at all for humans to
| discover or exlore is perplexing.
| [deleted]
| rimunroe wrote:
| > Because the conditions for the universe to allow for this
| configuration of matter existed before man.
|
| > Humans, a product of the universe itself, just discovered
| or found a way to configure matter this way.
|
| If you accept this as the distinction between "discovery" and
| "manufacturing", then _everything in existence_ is discovered
| rather than manufactured, which feels like a useless
| distinction to make. I think this is just an inherently fuzzy
| line. An ancient example of this is the debate around whether
| mathematical concepts are discovered or invented.
| iamerroragent wrote:
| "everything in existence is discovered rather than
| manufactured, which feels like a useless distinction to
| make."
|
| Is it all that fuzzy or useless if you shift your thinking
| to view things as discoveries made by you rather than
| manufactured by you?
|
| Manufacturing something could be a process carried out by
| human intelligence but the knowledge to process stuff into
| something 'more' is a discovery to be made.
|
| i.e. people make/invent chairs but discovered/experience a
| universe that lets them sit on chairs.
| rimunroe wrote:
| So humans discovered a way for matter to be configured in
| a new configuration for this uranium isotope, but we
| didn't discover how to arrange things into the shape of a
| chair?
| iamerroragent wrote:
| No?
|
| You just showed up to observe the universe and was gifted
| some ability to manipulate it to your advantage.
|
| You can say you were first to have an idea and we have a
| society that says you can have a right to 'own' that idea
| to sell or make money from it.
|
| But you didn't make a universe; a universe made you and
| you get to have ideas that are new, hopefully.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > then everything in existence is discovered rather than
| manufactured
|
| The first time this is true. But the second time it's a
| known process with a known outcome (and if it isn't, then
| you've just discovered something else). The first time is
| always science. The second time is usually technology.
| rimunroe wrote:
| Sorry, yes, I should have specified that
| numpad0 wrote:
| Vulnerabilities are discovered too
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| It's a matter of convention. As you go up the chain away from
| more applied fields, you stop "designing" and "creating" things
| and start "discovering" that they are possible. Mathematics and
| Physics are discovered, Chemistry uses both depending on the
| specific topic, pretty much all engineering is designed.
|
| A good way of thinking about it is considering intent. An
| engineer designing and then manufacturing a new car wants a to
| build a new car. A physicist making a new isotope just wants to
| prove that such an isotope can exist. In fact, often
| "discoveries" are can be purely mathematical: if you show a
| particle can exist in theory, that can be given a similar
| amount of weight as "proving" it by actually creating the
| particle.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| bell-cot wrote:
| > ...one of them, uranium-241, had never been observed before and
| that it marks the first time since 1979 that a neutron-rich
| uranium isotope has been discovered. The researchers also
| calculated that uranium-241 likely has a half-life of just 40
| minutes.
|
| So - If the "hard" SF novel you're writing needs some sort of
| Unobtainium for its big hand-wave...this discovery probably
| doesn't fit the bill.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| It's generally a bad idea to use an already known substance as
| Unobtainium, as it forces greater suspense of disbelief for
| those who know, or can predict, the properties of the
| substance.
|
| Ice-9, Dilithium, magnetic monopoles, are all much better
| Unobtainiums.
| ben_w wrote:
| The first two now have the same problem:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_IX
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilithium
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Sort of, but not in context of their original usage.
| Vonnegut's Ice 9 predated the naming of the real Ice 9, and
| Dilithium in Star Trek is not Li2. But yeah, in general I
| agree about dilithium. It would have been better if Star
| Trek had chosen a different name.
| ben_w wrote:
| Indeed. I like that in Babylon 5 they went with "Quantum
| 40".
|
| SG-1 kinda has the same problem, when you learn that
| Naqada is 20 km from Luxor and Kelowna is close to where
| the show was filmed.
| phkahler wrote:
| For SF you could also claim that an external magnetic field has
| a subtle influence on stability and is sufficient to go from 40
| day halflife to indefinite stability. This can also be used as
| an additional critical element.
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| You dont have to use anything complicated, just accelerate it
| to the speed of light and the half life will stay the same
| but we would observe it for significantly longer.
| maicro wrote:
| Plus you get to invent portable closed-loop particle
| accelerators...net win, I'd say.
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| I was just thinking that theres another way to store
| short half lives or other perishables, just create a
| miniature black hole, it will fall for infinity but you
| could retrieve the item once you stop feeding the black
| hole energy and it'll evaporate by hawking radiation in
| microseconds.
|
| Ive been watching too much doctor who and now I want a
| thermoscan based on black holes for my tea
| dylan604 wrote:
| what kind of shielding would be required to keep all of
| that radiation from killing you? i still don't trust the
| shielding on my microwave, so i can't imagine trying to
| shield the effects of a black hole
| ben_w wrote:
| There is no safe way to be near a black hole.
|
| If you have one of a "mere" 606 million tons, the Hawking
| radiation is hot enough to directly include fast moving
| positrons (and has a luminosity of 1.178 GW), while still
| massive enough to spaghettify you (370g at 10cm).
|
| If the black hole is lower mass, the radiation gets even
| more energetic. The radiation from 606 _thousand_ ton
| black holes (sometimes suggested for Hawking radiation
| drives for spacecraft) is hot enough the radiation will
| either include antiprotons, or at least the photons will
| be energetic enough to _spontaneously create them on
| impact_ :
| https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2022/05/14/no-a-
| black-...
| cwillu wrote:
| Alas, the way you feed energy to a blackhole is by
| dropping things into it.
|
| (Yes, there is a well-known paradox/open-problem implied
| by this.)
| lokimedes wrote:
| Nuclear Isomers are a wonderfully complex landscape of what-
| ifs.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Cool idea! A million plot possibilities could easily plug
| into "whoever controls the Unobtainium Handwave Device
| absolutely must keep the Para-Critical Core Stabilization
| Magnetic Field Generators super-cooled and fully energized at
| all times...".
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Cool idea!
|
| Once upon a time I wondered if magenetic fields influenced
| nuclear reation rates. Some googling suggested the answer
| is no, but I found very little in the way of actual
| experimental results testing it. In more recent times I
| think I did see one referene to an actual effect but I
| don't recall what it was. So IMHO this door is clearly open
| for fictional exploration.
| ortusdux wrote:
| For that you are going to need something in the predicted
| "Island of Stability", which ironically is a great name for a
| hard SF series.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability
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