element 118 created

just thought id drop this in here as its now official.

element 118 ( ununoctium ) has been created in russia in collaboration with a number of other researchers from the californian lawrence livermore national laboratory.

story

Wow...I didn't even know it was possible for humans to create elements!
Please excuse my ignorance (elements and chemistry never were my stong points) but is this the first synthetic Element?

Originally posted by Gear
Wow...I didn't even know it was possible for humans to create elements!

Please excuse my ignorance (elements and chemistry never were my stong points) but is this the first synthetic Element?

No it isn't. Everything past Uranium are synthetic elements(save for Plutonium). Neptunium(Element 93) was the first synthetic element confirmed.

The reason for this is because nearly all Transuranium elements are very unstable with very fast decay rates(measuring in the miliseconds to nanoseconds half-life) and require enormous energy to synthesize. Some of these elements may occur in nature, but they do so only in small, fleeting amounts that makes it impossible for us to detect them in nature so the best way to discover new elements is in an atom smasher or other high energy physics experiments.

[edit on 16-10-2006 by sardion2000]

[edit on 16-10-2006 by sardion2000]

[edit on 16-10-2006 by sardion2000]

Originally posted by sardion2000
No it isn't. Everything past Uranium are synthetic elements. Neptunium(Element 93) was the first synthetic element confirmed.

Actually small amount of plutonium have been discovered in nature, but that's generally true at least for Earth.

I liked one of the proposed names in responses there Notfakethistimeium I guess someone claimed to have produced before but it was discovered some of the research proof was forged.

[edit on 10/16/2006 by djohnsto77]

Actially small amount of plutonium have been discovered in nature, but that's generally true at least for Earth.

Ooops, forgot about that one. All except Plutonium.

[edit on 16-10-2006 by sardion2000]

[edit on 16-10-2006 by sardion2000]

the link i provided to ununoctium explains how elements past uranium are created artificially (unless they are microscopic quantities). they are synthetic superheavy elements.

they have to be created artificially because they are not naturally found in large enough quantities on earth, unlike the other elements of the periodic table. they are usually created in nuclear reactors and particle accelerators.

Shoot my table runs out way down at Unnilennium. LOL. I do find it interesting that an East/West collaboration has made a semi-conductive radioactive gas not a small feat in any quantity. Uue eh? Time to retire this old periodic table that hits redline at E-109! Thanks for starting this thread,

Victor K.

43'

Wow, this is the first of the Noble Gases created too!

"ununoctium ", christ what a horrible name. I mean, you "discover" a new element, and the best you can come up with is a latinzed version of its number? Yeesh. I mean, when those astronomers named the new 'planetoid' Eris (because its inclusion created chaos in our understanding of planets), that was brilliant. This, this is dull. The people that created it might actually be geniouses, but they clearly need to give the naming job to someone with a little imagination.

Anyone know if this gets us closer to the much fabled 'islands of stability'? The synthetic elements so far decay very quickly, but, from what I understand, some researchers think that there will be higher numbers of elements that will be so massive that they will hold themselves together, be non-radioactive (or at least as radioactive as Uranium, and thus, stable material).


Another interseting thing is that now any new elements will have to be on the next row of the table, thats pretty fascinating, we've completed the unfilled row of elements!


edit: my mistake, apparently that name is created as a placeholder until they have a new name.

I like th esound of "nygdanium"

Anyone else have otehr suggestions?

[edit on 16-10-2006 by Nygdan]

Actually there is a name being proposed, kind of jokingly, Notfakethistimeium or Not-fake-this-time-ium

Come on, you guys know it should be called BobLazarium

don't they say element 115 has the island of stablity (or whatever), well this is what i read on wikipedia, i think...

Originally posted by Nygdan
Another interseting thing is that now any new elements will have to be on the next row of the table, thats pretty fascinating, we've completed the unfilled row of elements!

Not entirely true, as that pesky 117 has been pretty elusive and has yet to have been synthesized. So we still have one more to go before filling up that bottom row.

On top of that, elements from 119 to 218 are theorized as well. The rows would be from 119 to 168 and 169 to 218, with numbers 121 to 138 and 171 to 188 being similar to the Lanthanides and Actinides that's we're so used to seeing separated from the main table.

Personally, I'm going to side with all the research that says number 138 will be the last element. Why's that? Because in order to maintain stable electron orbits in the lowest shell in elements heavier than that the electrons would have to travel faster than the speed of light.

Interesting that they made 118 before 117, i didn't realize that.

Yeah, that's generally the way it works. They create the heavier elements and then they decay into the lighter ones. If you look into it, you'll see a lot of the more recent discoveries were in pairs. For example, Ununpentium (115) was syntesized and it quickly broke down into Ununtrium (113), allowing both to be credited in the same discovery.

On top of that, they haven't been discovered in the numerical order, either. Ununquadium (114) was discovered over five years before the discoveries of 113 and 115. It's just kind of funny how it all jumps around like that.