BlindedByTheLite
Flashlight Enthusiast
taken from discover.com:
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Nuclear physicists have long suspected the existence of atoms far heavier than any yet discovered, but they lacked the technology needed to synthesize them. Now, a joint American-Russian team has found two new elements—numbers 113 and 115 on the periodic table—hinting at an impending breakthrough in creating novel forms of matter that will test our understanding of atomic behavior.
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Element 115 lives for 1/100,000th of a second before breaking down into element 113, which in turn decays after a little over a second. In the world of heavy elements those seemingly brief lifetimes are an eternity. This discovery confirms a long-held theory in nuclear physics that there is a region of enhanced stability at the margin of the periodic table. And for each new element that is discovered, there are potentially numerous undiscovered isotopes (different versions of the same element), some of which could be very stable. Next the team will shoot for elements 117 and 118. "You can consider this region of the chart as a puzzle," says Patin. "We get pieces of the puzzle, but there are a lot of isotopes of recently discovered elements that have not been seen."
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looks like scientists have their gears cranking quite smoothly right now.
[ QUOTE ]
Nuclear physicists have long suspected the existence of atoms far heavier than any yet discovered, but they lacked the technology needed to synthesize them. Now, a joint American-Russian team has found two new elements—numbers 113 and 115 on the periodic table—hinting at an impending breakthrough in creating novel forms of matter that will test our understanding of atomic behavior.
[/ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Element 115 lives for 1/100,000th of a second before breaking down into element 113, which in turn decays after a little over a second. In the world of heavy elements those seemingly brief lifetimes are an eternity. This discovery confirms a long-held theory in nuclear physics that there is a region of enhanced stability at the margin of the periodic table. And for each new element that is discovered, there are potentially numerous undiscovered isotopes (different versions of the same element), some of which could be very stable. Next the team will shoot for elements 117 and 118. "You can consider this region of the chart as a puzzle," says Patin. "We get pieces of the puzzle, but there are a lot of isotopes of recently discovered elements that have not been seen."
[/ QUOTE ]
looks like scientists have their gears cranking quite smoothly right now.