Okay, okay, I know what an element is, how it's defined, and the notorious instability of the more massive elements. What I wanted to know is how, specifically, the tests are performed and observed in order to determine the existence of a new element. Why has element 118 only been seen once, for example? Is it hard to get the necessary energy to create it in the first place? Does it take a lot of luck? Does it take super-high-tech detection equipment that we only now have access to?
Perhaps more pertinently, if we wanted to find element 119, how, precisely, would we go about it?
I don't know a whole lot about this, but...
Part of the problem is that even with the capability to create the conditions to generate superheavy elements, you have to figure out the equation to make that nucleus from other nuclei. A nucleus is only stable if nature really likes it that way (the odds of a nucleus being stable are increased if its number of protons or neutrons is a "magic number" - which you can think of like electrons being added to electron shells - and it's almost definitely stable if its protons and neutrons both have a magic number count [doubly magic]). If nature decides it's passable, you get a radioactive isotope (heavier elements only have radioactive isotopes). And usually the isotope can't be formed at all. So to make a superheavy nucleus, you not only need to have the right number of protons in both the nuclei you're combining; you also have to have the right number of neutrons in both nuclei.
When you don't already know the isotopes you can make, this gets tricky.
Of course, we have plenty of ways to guess what the isotopes we could make would be, but getting the necessary nuclei to attempt to make that isotope can be difficult too. The isotopes you think you need may be radioactive, in which case storage is a problem (and if the half-life is too short there may be a very small time window to attempt the experiment), or they may not exist, in which case you're out of luck. It may be really difficult to make the isotope you need, but you need a certain amount to hope to get results. And then, for whatever reason, you may fail to detect it entirely.
It's also possible that we've already created a few nuclei of element 119 and not even noticed. We may not have even been looking for it when it happened.
Like I said, though, I don't know a whole lot about this. But it's pretty neat stuff. I was at FSU over the summer and a grad student in nuclear physics showed us her experiment (studying gamma emissions from excited Aluminum-30 nuclei). Just to make it, they fired Carbon-14 nuclei through a linear particle accelerator into an Oxygen-18 target, making Silicon-32 which immediately decayed to Aluminum-30 and an alpha particle. In analyzing the gamma emissions, they had to identify background noise, emissions from the other nuclei in the experiment, and so on. I have a hard time imagining the kinds of hoops people must have to jump through to make and study superheavy elements.
50. Researchers from the University of Manchester managed to induce teeth growth in normal chickens - activating genes that have lain dormant for 80 million years.
Thats so fucking cool for so many different reasons.
Okay, okay, I know what an element is, how it's defined, and the notorious instability of the more massive elements. What I wanted to know is how, specifically, the tests are performed and observed in order to determine the existence of a new element. Why has element 118 only been seen once, for example? Is it hard to get the necessary energy to create it in the first place? Does it take a lot of luck? Does it take super-high-tech detection equipment that we only now have access to?
Perhaps more pertinently, if we wanted to find element 119, how, precisely, would we go about it?
Basically, you stick your atom in a particle accelerator and whip it around till it's going really fast, then divert it's path into another atom. Like a 100 mph bus smacking into a pedestrian, the there is a mostly inelastic collision where some bits do fly off, but in general the central mass is somewhat larger than it was before, and in the case of the atoms, that means more protons in the nucleus.
Knuckle Dragger on
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
3. Blue light fends off drowsiness in the middle of the night, which could be useful to people who work at night.
It's also often used for keeping people from sleeping in train station bathrooms . . . and from shooting-up in there because the blue light prevents you from locating your veins :?
18. Australian scientists discovered a polyrhachis sokolova, which is believed to be the only ant species that can live under water. It nests in submerged mangroves and hides from predators in air pockets.
Awesome. Underwater ants rock.
21. Two previously unknown forms of ice - dubbed by researchers as ice XIII and XIV - were discovered frozen at temperatures of around minus 160 degrees Celsius, or minus 256 Fahrenheit.
38. Most of us have microscopic, wormlike mites named Demodex that live in our eyelashes and have claws and a mouth.
AARGHH!
Good Christ, this comment combined with your avatar made me loose it.
The adult mites have a semi-transparent elongated body that consists of two segments and is between 0.1 mm and 0.4 mm long. Eight short segmented legs are attached to the first body segment. The body is covered with scales for anchoring itself in the hair follicle, and the mite has pin-like mouth-parts for eating skin-cells, hormones and oils (sebum) which accumulate in the hair follicles. The mite's digestive system is so efficient and results in so little waste that there is no excretory orifice. The mites can leave the hair follicles and slowly walk around on the skin, especially at night.
The total lifespan of a Demodex mite is several weeks. Mating takes place on the skin, and eggs are layed inside the hair follicles or sebaceous glands. The six-legged larvae hatch after 3-4 days, and it takes about seven days for the larvae to develop into adults. The dead mites decompose inside the hair follicles or sebaceous glands.
An estimated 96-98% of all people carry such mites—with up to 25 in each follicle, each person can have a potentially huge population of mites. It is quite easy to look for your own demodex mites, by carefully removing an eyelash or eyebrow hair and placing it under a microscope.
Someone! Set my face on fire! Kill them all dead!
"Treat it like a tumor and excise it, Dr. Stiles!"
"It's too fast! Try using the surgical laser!"
</traumacenter>
38. Most of us have microscopic, wormlike mites named Demodex that live in our eyelashes and have claws and a mouth.
AARGHH!
Good Christ, this comment combined with your avatar made me loose it.
The adult mites have a semi-transparent elongated body that consists of two segments and is between 0.1 mm and 0.4 mm long. Eight short segmented legs are attached to the first body segment. The body is covered with scales for anchoring itself in the hair follicle, and the mite has pin-like mouth-parts for eating skin-cells, hormones and oils (sebum) which accumulate in the hair follicles. The mite's digestive system is so efficient and results in so little waste that there is no excretory orifice. The mites can leave the hair follicles and slowly walk around on the skin, especially at night.
The total lifespan of a Demodex mite is several weeks. Mating takes place on the skin, and eggs are layed inside the hair follicles or sebaceous glands. The six-legged larvae hatch after 3-4 days, and it takes about seven days for the larvae to develop into adults. The dead mites decompose inside the hair follicles or sebaceous glands.
An estimated 96-98% of all people carry such mites—with up to 25 in each follicle, each person can have a potentially huge population of mites. It is quite easy to look for your own demodex mites, by carefully removing an eyelash or eyebrow hair and placing it under a microscope.
Someone! Set my face on fire! Kill them all dead!
"Treat it like a tumor and excise it, Dr. Stiles!"
"It's too fast! Try using the surgical laser!"
</traumacenter>
As disturbing as this is, I wonder if there is actually a benefit to having them.
I'm gonna keep telling myself there is to avoid ripping all my eyelashes out
21. Two previously unknown forms of ice - dubbed by researchers as ice XIII and XIV - were discovered frozen at temperatures of around minus 160 degrees Celsius, or minus 256 Fahrenheit.
38. Most of us have microscopic, wormlike mites named Demodex that live in our eyelashes and have claws and a mouth.
AARGHH!
Good Christ, this comment combined with your avatar made me loose it.
The adult mites have a semi-transparent elongated body that consists of two segments and is between 0.1 mm and 0.4 mm long. Eight short segmented legs are attached to the first body segment. The body is covered with scales for anchoring itself in the hair follicle, and the mite has pin-like mouth-parts for eating skin-cells, hormones and oils (sebum) which accumulate in the hair follicles. The mite's digestive system is so efficient and results in so little waste that there is no excretory orifice. The mites can leave the hair follicles and slowly walk around on the skin, especially at night.
The total lifespan of a Demodex mite is several weeks. Mating takes place on the skin, and eggs are layed inside the hair follicles or sebaceous glands. The six-legged larvae hatch after 3-4 days, and it takes about seven days for the larvae to develop into adults. The dead mites decompose inside the hair follicles or sebaceous glands.
An estimated 96-98% of all people carry such mites—with up to 25 in each follicle, each person can have a potentially huge population of mites. It is quite easy to look for your own demodex mites, by carefully removing an eyelash or eyebrow hair and placing it under a microscope.
Someone! Set my face on fire! Kill them all dead!
"Treat it like a tumor and excise it, Dr. Stiles!"
"It's too fast! Try using the surgical laser!"
</traumacenter>
As disturbing as this is, I wonder if there is actually a benefit to having them.
I'm gonna keep telling myself there is to avoid ripping all my eyelashes out
I remember hearing about this on Nickelodeon more than fifteen years ago.
Knuckle Dragger on
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
Posts
Bwuh?
Part of the problem is that even with the capability to create the conditions to generate superheavy elements, you have to figure out the equation to make that nucleus from other nuclei. A nucleus is only stable if nature really likes it that way (the odds of a nucleus being stable are increased if its number of protons or neutrons is a "magic number" - which you can think of like electrons being added to electron shells - and it's almost definitely stable if its protons and neutrons both have a magic number count [doubly magic]). If nature decides it's passable, you get a radioactive isotope (heavier elements only have radioactive isotopes). And usually the isotope can't be formed at all. So to make a superheavy nucleus, you not only need to have the right number of protons in both the nuclei you're combining; you also have to have the right number of neutrons in both nuclei.
When you don't already know the isotopes you can make, this gets tricky.
Of course, we have plenty of ways to guess what the isotopes we could make would be, but getting the necessary nuclei to attempt to make that isotope can be difficult too. The isotopes you think you need may be radioactive, in which case storage is a problem (and if the half-life is too short there may be a very small time window to attempt the experiment), or they may not exist, in which case you're out of luck. It may be really difficult to make the isotope you need, but you need a certain amount to hope to get results. And then, for whatever reason, you may fail to detect it entirely.
It's also possible that we've already created a few nuclei of element 119 and not even noticed. We may not have even been looking for it when it happened.
Like I said, though, I don't know a whole lot about this. But it's pretty neat stuff. I was at FSU over the summer and a grad student in nuclear physics showed us her experiment (studying gamma emissions from excited Aluminum-30 nuclei). Just to make it, they fired Carbon-14 nuclei through a linear particle accelerator into an Oxygen-18 target, making Silicon-32 which immediately decayed to Aluminum-30 and an alpha particle. In analyzing the gamma emissions, they had to identify background noise, emissions from the other nuclei in the experiment, and so on. I have a hard time imagining the kinds of hoops people must have to jump through to make and study superheavy elements.
Bringing cockfights into a whole new level.
Basically, you stick your atom in a particle accelerator and whip it around till it's going really fast, then divert it's path into another atom. Like a 100 mph bus smacking into a pedestrian, the there is a mostly inelastic collision where some bits do fly off, but in general the central mass is somewhat larger than it was before, and in the case of the atoms, that means more protons in the nucleus.
- John Stuart Mill
Awesome. Underwater ants rock.
21. Two previously unknown forms of ice - dubbed by researchers as ice XIII and XIV - were discovered frozen at temperatures of around minus 160 degrees Celsius, or minus 256 Fahrenheit.
They... discovered ice nine. Uh oh.
"Treat it like a tumor and excise it, Dr. Stiles!"
"It's too fast! Try using the surgical laser!"
</traumacenter>
USE THE FORCE
:^:
You're not L33T enough for IDI/RN FTP!
I don't know about you fuckers but I knew a lot of this shit before 2006.
As disturbing as this is, I wonder if there is actually a benefit to having them.
I'm gonna keep telling myself there is to avoid ripping all my eyelashes out
But what about a fight between an owl and a tiger? I'd say the owl would win.
O RLY?
Sorry. Might as well have said ALL UR BASE LOL
Glad someone else caught that
- John Stuart Mill