[HN Gopher] Physicists may now have a way to make element 120
___________________________________________________________________
Physicists may now have a way to make element 120
Author : _Microft
Score : 91 points
Date : 2024-07-24 13:06 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newscientist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newscientist.com)
| jmclnx wrote:
| For the curious, it is Unbinilium
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbinilium
| pxndxx wrote:
| That's just a temporary name (un-bi-nil-ium, meaning one-two-
| zero-ium) and will be assigned a new name once it's actually
| discovered and verified.
| n4r9 wrote:
| The highest atomic number of any synthesised element appears
| to be Oganesson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oganesson .
| Only 5 atoms have ever been synthesised. It's speculated to
| be a solid at room temperature despite belonging to the
| "noble gas" family. Chemistry is fascinating.
| hoseja wrote:
| And it closes the periodic table so nicely. We really
| shouldn't be trying to go any further until and if they can
| predict the island of stability with high confidence.
| kamarg wrote:
| > We really shouldn't be trying to go any further until
| and if they can predict the island of stability with high
| confidence.
|
| I don't know much about chemistry since I haven't done
| anything with it in the last 20ish years. What need is
| there to be able to accurately predict it before
| attempting to synthesize it?
| ufmace wrote:
| The way this stuff seems to work, it doesn't make sense
| to go theory-first. We can spin up a bazillion theories
| about it, with no clue which if any are anywhere near
| true. We've got to just try it, gather experimental data,
| and see if we can build any more solidly-backed theories
| around that data.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The island of stability should occur (indeed, does appear
| to occur, although we're still neutron-poor) in the
| elements of the low 110s.
| JackFr wrote:
| Is island-of-stability stability like 1 second stability
| or 1 million years stability?
| jcranmer wrote:
| As I understand it, like 1 year stability. Some of the
| isotopes we have discovered on the shores have a half-
| life of around a minute already.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| They thought they could predict it with high confidence a
| couple decades ago and then they learned more and
| confidence lowered again. That's kind of the nature of
| science, use what you know to find out what you don't
| know, and keep adjusting your models as you go.
|
| That's also something of the paradox at work at something
| like this: you sometimes can't have models that strongly
| predict interesting or "good" outcomes (such as the
| "island of stability") without a lot more data from
| experiments and maybe you aren't running the right
| experiments because you don't have the right model, but
| you won't have the right model until you run more
| experiments.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Scientific textbook publishers are salivating at a new
| element though
| Woshiwuja wrote:
| Chemistry is weird af. How does sodium (lethal) + clorine
| (lethal) = salt (yummy)
| sesm wrote:
| Because it's Cl- ions in salt vs Cl2 in gas.
| o11c wrote:
| That's literally the same as asking "how come hydrogen
| (flammable) + oxygen (enhances fire) = water (does not
| burn)?", but we probably have a better mental grasp of
| how water works.
| gruturo wrote:
| Oversimplifying, but you can explain that as "Because
| water is... the "ash" you get after burning hydrogen and
| oxygen."
| stergios wrote:
| I think the intent is that water is a byproduct of
| combustion.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the intent was that water is a byproduct
| of combustion.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Most pure elements are either useless or harmful to us.
|
| You could say that about the constituent elements of
| pretty much any chemical necessary for life.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Broadly speaking, it's because elemental sodium and
| chlorine are very unstable; in other words they have very
| high potential energy.
|
| A boulder balanced 40m above your head is lethally
| dangerous; vs. if mostly-embedded in the dirt next to you
| it's perfectly safe.
| dekhn wrote:
| because salt, when it's in water, breaks down into sodium
| ions (not lethal) not elemental sodium and chlorine ions
| not chlorine gas. Your body has all the tools required to
| handle sodium and chlorine ions (literally "pumps" that
| move them in and out of cells, and organs that process
| the ions so they can be excreted in urine.
|
| But yes, in general it's interesting how little
| difference there is from "essential nutrient" and "human
| poison"
| vikingerik wrote:
| Because one really really wants to give away an electron,
| and one really really wants to accept an electron, and so
| when they meet and consummate that they're both
| delighted.
| Ekaros wrote:
| They are small first of all so reactive. And having so
| close full orbitals they really really want to get rid or
| take that electron. Thus aggressively make things
| happen...
|
| And why it is yummy, well they are pretty useful atoms in
| lot of chemistry and in general balancing things that
| happens in body. Thus it is nice to have sufficient
| amount around... Best way to encourage this is to make it
| taste good like sugar does too.
| smcin wrote:
| "Formerly known as Ununoctium (Uuo)"
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| I prefer "eka-radium" because it tells you that it's under
| "radium" in the table.
| jl6 wrote:
| Or shat-beryllium?
| pfdietz wrote:
| https://archive.ph/MqCpl
| pfdietz wrote:
| TL;DR: accelerating titanium ions to 0.1 c into a plutonium
| target made 2 atoms of Livermorium.
|
| The difficulty here is that such a collision leaves the result
| very "hot", so it tends to decompose. This tendency is minimized
| by reducing the energy of the incoming ion, but that reduces the
| rate of fusion.
|
| Needless to say, this doesn't present much in the way of
| practical benefit from producing some new science fictional
| material. It's purely of scientific interest.
| eichin wrote:
| Key point I missed: Livermorium here is just a benchmark for
| the new titanium-beam process (having been discovered in 2000.)
| Actually using it to attempt to produce element 120 is a future
| step.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Yes; they had to demonstrate they could form and accelerate
| titanium beams (made difficult by the high temperature needed
| to sufficiently vaporize titanium.)
| eichin wrote:
| Heh, the materials science side of particle physics is all
| sorts of fun: accelerate the particles to 10% of the speed
| of light - no big deal, but actually vaporizing them in the
| first place...
| beerandt wrote:
| The tangent on manipulating Titanium in order to prepare it for
| the beam was more interesting to me, and IMHO sounds like a
| much more practical and potentially useful bit of knowledge
| coming from this.
|
| Titanium is a pita to work with.
|
| But also... the 'island of stability' is fascinating, and I
| think we have to assume that we don't know enough about the
| Strong Force until we either prove it exists and is reachable,
| or doesn't/isn't.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The problem with the strong force is that it doesn't have
| some nice tidy description, like the inverse square law for
| the electrostatic force.
|
| It's spin dependent, and not just involving interactions of
| pairs of nucleons. There are at least three-nucleon terms in
| the potential. It looks like something accidental, not
| elegant or designed. It just "happens" to give stable nuclei
| that end up allowing something like us to have come into
| existence. I get the feeling of anthropic effects on display.
| jcghgxt wrote:
| I don't get this. Do nucleons bind and hold together
| because of the strong force or gravity? I thought strong
| force only keeps quarks together via gluon exchange
| pfdietz wrote:
| Nucleons in nuclei are bound by the strong force. It's
| (vaguely) analogous to the way the electromagnetic force
| still binds neutral molecules together (van der Waals
| force).
|
| At the scale of the nucleus, gravity is many, MANY orders
| of magnitude weaker.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I'm a little disappointed the article didn't talk about why they
| are skipping 119.
| lightedman wrote:
| It still hasn't been synthesized, as far as we know of. Not
| even a single atom.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| There are Reasons why even-numbered elements are slightly more
| stable (although frankly I don't understand them). If you look
| at the recent timeline
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_chemical_elements)
| 112, 114, 116, 118 were all discovered before 113, 115, 117.
| munificent wrote:
| I'm not enough of a physicist to understand the article, but
| this Wikipedia page talks about why even numbers of protons and
| neutrons are more stable:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Even_and_odd_atomic_nuclei
| ssijak wrote:
| Hypothetically, is it possible that periodic table is infinite,
| its just too hard to create other elements?
| mglz wrote:
| Hard to create and the results seem to get more and more
| unstable, making it very hard to do any science on them.
| However there is a theorized "island of stability", where
| superheavy elements might stick around for a bit longer:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability
| delecti wrote:
| That theorized island is centered around elements we've
| already discovered though, being in the range of ~110
| protons. So element 120, being discussed, is already well
| past that point.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Why couldn't there be multiple islands of stability, and
| why couldn't they be way higher in proton count? All you
| should really need is a fairly "balanced" nucleus, right?
| Is there some property of larger nuclei that makes them
| increasingly more difficult to balance?
| mannykannot wrote:
| I just posted some notes on this in another reply:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41057818
| adrian_b wrote:
| There are with certainty multiple islands of stability,
| when each layer of nucleons becomes complete.
|
| However, in each island of stability the most stable
| element is much less stable than the most stable element
| of the previous island of stability. Therefore in most
| higher islands of stability the decay times will become
| too short.
|
| It is possible and rather likely that only the first
| undiscovered island of stability may contain relatively
| long-lived elements, e.g. with half-lives over one
| second.
|
| An island of stability finishes at bismuth, which is
| radioactive, but which has a huge half-life. The next
| island of stability contains the long-lived thorium and
| uranium and the still relatively long-lived neptunium and
| plutonium, after which the half-lives decrease very
| quickly.
|
| Whichever will be the longest-lived elements of the next
| island of stability, their half-lives will be many orders
| of magnitude smaller than those of thorium and uranium.
| daedrdev wrote:
| Notably Lead-208 has magic numbers of protons and
| neutrons so is extra stable, with lead itself
| representing the last stable element
| adrian_b wrote:
| The next magic numbers after 82 are not known with
| certainty.
|
| Nevertheless, it was usually supposed that 126 is the next
| magic number for protons, in which case it has not been
| reached yet. Other possible values, from more recent
| computations, are 122 and 124, also not reached yet.
|
| Moreover, the isotopes that are the most stable for the
| already synthesized elements are expected to have more
| neutrons than in the isotopes that have been successfully
| produced. So it is not impossible that an "island of
| stability" might have already been reached, but only with
| isotopes that have so few neutrons that they remain outside
| the zone of stability.
| HPsquared wrote:
| "IUPAC defines an element to exist if its lifetime is longer
| than 10^-14 second, which is the time it takes for the atom to
| form an electron cloud.[7]"
|
| If the nucleus disintegrates before electrons can cluster
| around it, you're not really in the realm of chemistry any
| more. Chemistry is all about those electrons.
| staunton wrote:
| One could argue that neutron stars are nuclea... If so, at
| least nuclea production doesn't stop any time soon. Probably
| you wouldn't call it an atom though...
| adrian_b wrote:
| The neutron is really an additional chemical element, the
| element with Z=0.
|
| It belongs in the group of noble gases, together with
| helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon and radon. Like radon,
| it is unstable, but also like radon it is widespread in
| nature as a product of radioactive decays.
|
| The element with Z=0 has multiple isotopes, like any other
| chemical element. Unlike for any other element, the
| possibility of gravitational stabilization makes the number
| of its stable isotopes potentially infinite.
|
| The neutron stars can be seen as belonging to the isotopes
| of the chemical element with Z=0.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Define "periodic table".
|
| The operating definition has been "a list of all elements that
| humans have discovered and/or made". By that definition, it is
| not currently infinite, nor will it ever be.
|
| If instead you define it to mean "all elements that might
| theoretically exist under all theories of physics that are not
| currently definitively ruled out", then it may be it infinite.
| But that's not the normal definition.
| breck wrote:
| This.
|
| We give too much importance to the "Periodic Table". It's
| just a man-made microlang. Nature is unconcerned with it.
| There is much more beyond it.
|
| P.S. While I'm criticizing the PT, might as well mention that
| I think we've probably done people a diservice by giving
| misnomer names like "Hydrogen" and "Oxygen" to these
| elements, which is completely disconnected from the
| mathematical beauty and patterns that those names represent.
| snapcaster wrote:
| What would you name Hydrogen and Oxygen?
| NeoTar wrote:
| Inverting the names makes sense.
|
| Wikipedia: Oxygen
|
| > Lavoisier renamed 'vital air' to oxygene in 1777 from
| the Greek roots oxus (oxys) (acid, literally 'sharp',
| from the taste of acids) and -genes (-genes) (producer,
| literally begetter), because he mistakenly believed that
| oxygen was a constituent of all acids.
|
| Hydrogen comes from 'water', which contains hydrogen and
| oxygen.
|
| So, since all acids must have Hydrogen, Oxygen is
| actually a better name for Hydrogen. This then leaves the
| name Hydrogen free for Oxygen.
| breck wrote:
| Great question.
|
| Singtium and Octium, perhaps.
| mannykannot wrote:
| One of the initial consequences of the periodic table was
| that the gaps were correctly seen as suggesting the existence
| of elements that had _not_ then been discovered (or made, of
| course) and as a guide to their chemical properties, which
| was useful in finding them.
|
| I think it is clear what question is being asked here. There
| will be a limit on the maximum size of a nucleus stable
| enough to count as an element, as there are a couple of
| effects which, at some point, will be insurmountable (and
| which are also responsible for an isotope of lead being the
| largest stable element.)
|
| One is that the electrical repulsion of the protons is long-
| range, while the strong nuclear force binding the nucleons
| together is short-range. To simplify quite a bit, in a large
| nucleus, each proton is being repelled by every other one,
| while it is being bound only by its neighboring nucleons.
|
| The second effect prevents this being worked around by adding
| more neutrons, as one reaches a point where it is
| energetically favorable for a neutron to convert to a proton
| via beta decay.
|
| As mentioned by others, there is likely an 'island of
| stability' around the largest elements created so far, but
| this is, at best, only a brief respite from the inexorable
| effects described above.
|
| The estimates of the half-live of any given element on the
| island of stability ranges over several orders of magnitude.
| That being so, it seems unlikely that there is any clear idea
| which isotope is the largest possible in this universe.
|
| Neutron stars are, of course, very large agglomerations of
| nucleons, but it seems pointless to call them elements (and
| there is an upper limit on their size, anyway.)
| jmyeet wrote:
| It depends on your definition of an element. Is it just a
| nucleus or does it have to have electrons too? Because if there
| are electrons, there is a hard limit [1]. The relativistic
| speed of the electron in the 1s orbital is Z/137 of the speed
| of light (Z = atomic number).
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_quantum_chemistry
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| That won't be a hard limit. Your link says that it is a
| perturbative theory; it won't hold for a velocity that is a
| significant fraction of the speed of light. The Z/137 formula
| won't hold for large Z.
| pfdietz wrote:
| What would happen in sufficiently heavy nuclei is spontaneous
| creation of an electron positron pair, with the electron
| remaining bound and the positron emitted. This would require
| the binding energy of the electron be great enough for this
| to be energetically possible.
| perihelions wrote:
| I don't believe chemical elements would cease to exist above
| Z=137--they just get progressively stranger, electronic
| effects get more relativistic. It is not a hard limit.
|
| (It's not as if the speed of electrons would *exceed* _c_
| above Z=137; it just approaches it asymptotically. The 1 /137
| factor comes from the _non-relativistic_ approximation
| (simply, the plain Bohr model [0])).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr_model#Derivation
| blindriver wrote:
| There's a hypothesis that I heard back when I was in high
| school 40 years ago that maybe the atoms start stabilizing
| again once you go high enough in the atomic number. It was just
| a hypothesis but kind of cool to think about.
| px43 wrote:
| It's called the "Island of Stability" :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability
| russdill wrote:
| No, at some point gravity becomes important and you can make
| enormous atomic nuclei. Neutron stars are about 5% protons. I
| don't think people would think these would count though as it's
| not like you can have chemistry between neutron stars and the
| electrons do not behave like they do in atoms. And past another
| point you just get a black hole.
|
| So clearly there is a limit. Either bounded by the point where
| gravity becomes dominant or when you get a black hole.
| jessriedel wrote:
| For sufficiently heavy nuclei, you would cease to have any
| bound states way, way before gravitational effects were
| important.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Neutron stars certainly do have attraction ... don't see why
| they can't have some chemistry as well. They seem cool after
| all.
| philipov wrote:
| No. Regardless of anything about definitions or stability that
| other commenters have mentioned, the mass of possible elements
| is bounded by General Relativity.
|
| There is a theoretical upper bound on the mass of an elementary
| particle at which it will collapse into a black hole.
| Fundamental particles can not be heavier than the Planck Mass,
| and Atoms should have a corresponding value at which they will
| likewise collapse into a black hole.
|
| Black holes do not satisfy even the loosest definition of an
| element.
| exe34 wrote:
| that's probably a lot higher than the sort of atomic number
| we can realistically reach in the lab?
| philipov wrote:
| Oh, it's immensely massive compared to anything that's
| likely to possibly exist as an element. But in proving
| something is finite, it doesn't matter if we overshoot by a
| million million percent, all we have to do is establish any
| bound at all. We don't have to engage with the question of
| what we can do in a lab, because the question only requires
| any theoretical limit to exist.
|
| It may be difficult to predict just how far we can go in a
| lab, but the existence of black holes means there _must_ be
| some limit.
| arcadi7 wrote:
| nonsense . heavy nuclea are bound states of many constituents
| . no different from grain of salt . grain of salt can be much
| heavier than planck mass (which is about few micrograms
| arcadi7 wrote:
| nucleus is extremely fluffy by general relativity standards .
| for black holes the mass and size are linearly proportional .
| the solar mass black hole has few mile size and has density
| few times smaller than that of the nucleus . solar mass is
| about 10^57 protons or about 10^55 heavy nuclea like uranium
| . so in order for general relativity to be important for
| uranium nucleus, it has to have a size of 5 miles/10^55 or
| about 10^-49 cm . instead heavy nuclea have a size of about
| 10^-15 cm . so nuclea are 34 orders of magnitude fluffier
| than they should be for any general relativity to be of any
| relevance . they are as good as grain of salt
| mppm wrote:
| No, the stability of elements peaks at iron and nickel and
| declines again after that. If you look at the curve of binding
| energy per nucleon [1], the trend is quite obvious. Note in
| particular that at some point past uranium, the average binding
| energy declines to below that of helium, making the isotopes
| extremely susceptible to alpha particle emission. There are
| some "islands of relative stability", where heavy elements are
| stabilized by "magic numbers" of protons and neutrons -- which
| is why thorium and uranium are so long lived. But we can be
| quite certain that there is no such thing as Element 200.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Binding_energy_curve_-
| _co...
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| Why does that graph look like it's upside-down? Shouldn't
| having more binding energy per nucleon make an isotope less
| stable, not more? Are the energies implied to be negative
| potential energy?
| HPsquared wrote:
| Binding energy = energy released when the nucleons bind
| together.
|
| In other words, energy required to break them apart.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Ignoring neutron stars or exotic states of quark matter, I
| think conventional nuclei will become effectively unbound to
| proton or neutron emission if sufficiently massive.
| empath75 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent_of_stability
|
| At some point it becomes "quark matter" and might exist in
| collapsed stars.
| ars wrote:
| At some point the element will decay faster than it can exist.
| There are already subatomic particles that get created on one
| side of the particle and decay on the other, i.e. their
| lifetime is shorter than that time it takes for light to travel
| from one side of the particle to the other.
|
| Atoms are much bigger than subatomic particles, so they have to
| live even longer in order to exist.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's all about stability. If you try and jam too many protons and
| neutrons together, they won't stay together for long. If the
| nucleus disintegrates before there's time for electrons to form
| and act like a chemical element, it's not really in the realm of
| chemistry any more.
|
| "IUPAC defines an element to exist if its lifetime is longer than
| 10^-14 second, which is the time it takes for the atom to form an
| electron cloud.[7]"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheavy_element
|
| (Edit: this was intended in response to ssijak's question about
| the theoretical limits)
| tomcam wrote:
| It's answers like this that may hacker News one of the best
| places ever
| adrianN wrote:
| If you jam _a lot_ of protons and neutrons together they become
| stable thanks to gravity. I wonder where the crossover point
| is.
| stouset wrote:
| Ah yes, good ol' element unnil^{54}ium, a proton star. That
| would make a great "Things I Won't Work With" entry for Derek
| Lowe.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't nuclear-density
| collapsed matter stars exclusively zero-net-charge neutron
| stars? I suppose you could instantiate an "oops all
| protons" neutron star with a charge of 10^54 coulombs in
| Universe Sandbox, but I struggle to imagine how that would
| come to or continue to exist physically.
|
| More importantly, I think that the Coulomb's Law repulsion
| effect would more than cancel out the gravitational
| attraction effect - both laws work as Force = (constant x
| particle1 x particle2) / distance^2, and the
| electromagnetic force is much, much stronger than gravity
| at all distances.
| stouset wrote:
| Look I never said it was a good idea.
| dmd wrote:
| xkcd what if covered it: https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/
| acchow wrote:
| My understanding is that the repulsion between the positive
| charges (protons) far exceeds the gravitational force.
| vikingerik wrote:
| For normal nuclei it does, but when you get up into a solar
| mass sized blob of them, gravity exceeds it. That's because
| the repulsion is going in all directions and nets out
| against itself but all the gravity points inwards
| cumulatively.
|
| (Edit because we got a little confused in the replies: If
| it were all protons, they would repel and overcome gravity.
| But real matter isn't that, it's always protons and
| neutrons and electrons with close to no net repulsion so
| gravity wins.)
|
| Similarly, radioactive nuclei (alpha emitters and
| spontaneous fission) happen because the electromagnetic
| repulsion exceeds the strong force, which has a very short
| range and doesn't reach across those large nuclei.
| kaashif wrote:
| > That's because the repulsion is going in all directions
| and nets out against itself but all the gravity points
| inwards cumulatively.
|
| Is that true? All of the protons repel all other protons
| with the electric force and attract with the
| gravitational force, and it seems like gravity is just
| much weaker at all distances...
|
| I haven't thought about this very hard though.
| vikingerik wrote:
| Think of three protons in a line, A-B-C. Proton B is
| repelled in both directions so experiences no net force.
|
| Now think of 10^50 protons in a line. They're all
| experiencing net gravity towards the middle.
| wakamoleguy wrote:
| A is repelled outward, B is not repelled, C is repelled
| outward.
|
| With gravity, A is attracted inward, B is not attracted,
| C is attracted inward.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I think that gravity starts winning once it becomes strong
| enough to encourage the positive charges to evacuate,
| leaving neutrons where there once were protons, like the
| juice leaving a squeezed orange.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Gravity is strictly accumulative. All other forces are
| paired with positive and negative carriers
| (electromagnetic, weak nuclear, strong nuclear).
|
| Protons can generate neutrons through beta decay. I suspect
| something like this happens in neutron stars, which don't
| spontaneously fly apart into a proton cloud, so far as
| we've observed.
|
| This SE comment explains why neutron stars don't contain
| (many) protons:
|
| <https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/149656>
|
| (The ratio seems to be ~100:1 neutron:proton.)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Don't we all. This is the reason general relativity and the
| standard model don't fit under one framework (string theory
| has currently failed to combine them in a testable way), we
| don't understand why or when gravity starts to become
| important.
| cvoss wrote:
| I don't think that's accurate. We can pretty carefully
| calculate the forces involved and answer the question as
| posed. Related: We can calculate how strong a magnet has to
| be to hold your artwork on the fridge in opposition to the
| force of Earth's gravity.
|
| The GR vs Standard Model breakdown occurs at the extreme
| limits of GR, for example Planck scale regions of space and
| black hole singularities. A heavy nucleus is way too big to
| probe these limits and is well within the domain of physics
| where we don't see a conflict between the two theories.
| FredPret wrote:
| Apparently the smallest a neutron star could theoretically be
| is 0.1 - 0.2 Solar masses. [0]
|
| And then 1.4 Solar masses is the upper limit. [1]
|
| [0] https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/143174/43351 [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrasekhar_limit
| kevinastone wrote:
| The Chandrasekhar limit is the maximum size of a white-
| dwarf, not a neutron star. It's usually defined as the
| minimum size of a neutron star (since it has to overcome
| electron-degeneracy pressure). The TOV limit[0] is the
| maximum size of a neutron star.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolman%E2%80%93Oppenheime
| r%E2%...
| out_of_protocol wrote:
| Don't forget electrons. Without them, you'll see something
| violent, up to instant black hole (relevant xkcd:
| https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/ )
|
| P.S. Quote from the link:
|
| > Would this black hole cause the universe to collapse? Hard
| to say.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I hope the universe lets us upgrade the periodic table once we
| reach 120. Maybe we earn a new alpha constant that enables a
| whole new level of new elements for long distance space travel.
| charlie0 wrote:
| Specifically, is there anything that can be done with this
| element in the real world that would otherwise be impossible?
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| These elements will never exist in any number for any
| meaningful amount of time for the human scale.
|
| That said, these extreme elements are great tests of the
| understanding of mechanics of atomic nuclei. Personally, I
| expect this improved understanding to become important in
| nanofabrication/nanotechnology as we are getting individual
| atoms to stick to each other.
|
| There are other implications I'm sure for those studying the
| early superhot universe.
|
| There is also the chance this is a stepping stone to the Island
| of Stability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability
| retrac wrote:
| We have no idea because we don't know the properties of super-
| heavy elements. There is some conjecture from theory about an
| "island of stability" where super-dense elements above 118
| become more stable, with half-lives in human terms like many
| seconds (rather than microseconds or nanoseconds). If so it
| would open all sorts of doors for physics and chemistry
| experiments on super heavy elements we can't do today because
| they disappear too quickly. It has even been suggested that
| these elements are effectively stable and account for some of
| what we call dark matter. (That one is unlikely.). Though
| really the chances are that such elements destroy themselves so
| quickly they can't be usefully examined.
| daedrdev wrote:
| Some of the longer lived of the manufactured elements have
| medical uses. There's a chance the elements in the island of
| stability might have interesting properties
| news_to_me wrote:
| For some background on the quest to discover new elements, I
| highly recommend this video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe5WT22-AO8. The main story about
| Ninov's fraud is pretty interesting, but the beginning does a
| good overview of the recent history.
| pests wrote:
| Yes this was a great video.
| excalibur wrote:
| Here's hoping the person who winds up with the naming rights is a
| proper nerd. I want it to be called something fun, like
| vibranium, adamantium, or midichlorium.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I hope they patent it, just to draw attention to the absurdity
| of IP law.
| nayuki wrote:
| I hope they use said patent to sue supernovas for creating
| element 120 without license
| mrguyorama wrote:
| New elements are named by
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IUPAC/IUPAP_Joint_Working_Part...
|
| They typically try to honor someone or something relevant to
| particle physics or nuclear physics. So, no fun allowed, unless
| you are a physicist in which case you probably find naming
| things after historical physics figures fun.
| NeoTar wrote:
| I'm a physicist (completely unrelated field though), but I
| want to name it after Ytterby in Sweden so rather than having
| four elements named after one town, we now have five...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6lGe5jgZgI
| xyst wrote:
| what are the applications for these new elements? more
| destructive atomic bomb? any medical applications?
|
| besides learning about them briefly in chem classes as the "man
| made elements", haven't heard much from them otherwise
| curiouscavalier wrote:
| Been a while since I was in this area, so I may be off base.
| But my knee jerk thought on Ubn is getting another valuable
| data point on nuclear structure. We've got a magic number at
| Z=82 and one at N=126. Do we get it one at higher Z? This
| doesn't answer it directly, but it's a step along the path. And
| at the very least is a great data point for
| confirming/constraining various structure models.
| empath75 wrote:
| There are some predicted islands of stability at various points
| further out in the periodic table:
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-quest-for-sup...
| odo1242 wrote:
| Dang, just one away from discovering the g block!
| odo1242 wrote:
| Context: The periodic table currently can be arranged into four
| "blocks": the S block (first two columns), the P block (last
| six columns, excluding Helium), the D block (transition metals,
| in the center), and the F block (under the periodic table).
|
| The 121st element would end up in the G block, which isn't in
| any of these locations but rather gets its own special
| location.
| puzzledobserver wrote:
| While we hear a lot about isotopes (nuclei with same proton count
| but different neutron count), we don't hear as much about nuclear
| isomers (nuclei with the same proton count and same neutron
| count, but somehow having different configurations).
|
| 1. Are nuclear isomers a thing?
|
| 2. Corollary: Could it be the case that some nuclei are stable
| and others are unstable, even though they have the same numbers
| of protons and neutrons?
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| The answer to both your questions is yes. Wikipedia has a
| pretty extensive article about it:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_isomer
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