Element 114 - island of stability.
17 May 2008 17:08:52 UTC
Topic 193683
(moderation:
This is nothing to do with Einstein, but I did have a good chat here once before over a physics puzzle so I'm wasting bandwidth again!
I just watched this, absolutely fascinating stuff, however, a question struck me immediatly.
They react an obscure isotope of Plutonium with an obscure isotope of Calcium to produce a duff isotope of 114ium.
I, of course, understand that these reactions are somewhat rare when working with 2 nuclei, but I wondered why ALL of the workers seemed fixated with X + Y nuclear reactions.
Of course, X + Y + Z is not going to happen as frequently, but wondered if there was some combination of say 3 nuclei of more common type in a 6 pointed star shaped reactor might yield a result. Of course, the chances of reaction with 3 nuclei at just the right moment are less likely, but when dealing with common isotopes, presumably the beam could be very much richer, thus reducing the odds.
Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.
Element 114 - island of stability.
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I think it's because of the amount of energy required to overcome the Coulomb barrier. Note that Coulomb's barrier increases with increasing atomic number (number of protons in the nucleus). And the easiest way to overcome that has been to accelerate one element towards the other (as in an ion collider). I wonder if they might see any 114ium in any experiments at the RHIC [edit1: I meant the LHC, oops] at some point?
Great idea! What would happen if you tossed some uranium and calcium into a Polywell reactor...? [edit2: and for element Z, just some extra protons/neutrons?] Not quite a 6 pointed star shape but it does have 6 faces to it....
If, ultimately, they want
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If, ultimately, they want 114ium, then they are going to have to overcome the Coulomb Barrier aanyway. I would have thought it easier, (i.e. less energy demanding), to force "n" light nuclei together then force a Calcium nucleus into an hugely positive Plutonium one.
I thought a bit more about it. The problem with some of the other trans-Uranics is their half life is so short, they have to wait for a reaction to occur where the detector of the fission fragments is. That wouldn't be the case with a stable nucleus. The plasma would gradually enrich in 114ium.
Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.
This can be an unbelievably
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This can be an unbelievably fascinating area. 'Everyday' environments don't support these states of matter, but even long shots come in if you keep trying enough times. Hypothetically there may be situations out in the cosmos that support their formation - and if favourable conditions endure then yes, it will accumulate 114'ium ( or others ).
One reasonable thought is high gravity scenarios. The key point is that gravity always attracts ( on sub-galaxy scales anyway ) and so can beat the Coulomb barrier. No one actually knows what lies at the heart of neutron stars, black holes etc ..... just that the space external to those bodies behaves consistent with a contained mass of so and so.
This means that the observables for us ( accretion disks, gravity waves ... ) is independent of the detailed core composition of these objects. Present theoretical estimates of these 'centres' are based on projections of behaviours on our current non-gravity squeezed parameters.
This sort of research thus can perhaps tease out different 'equations of state' to throw out at celestial objects.
Who really believes, in their heart of hearts, that a black hole contains an actual infinitely dense singularity?
In the past, when theories have emitted infinities this has been a signal that 'this theory is stuffed/stretched/broken/exceeded'.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal