New element

[Ray Moscow]

A new element will be added to the periodic table:

First new element for five years makes periodic table (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17297-first-new-element-for-five-years-makes-periodic-table.html)

A new "superheavy" element is being added to the periodic table. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has decided that the as-yet-unnamed element finally meets the conditions for official recognition, 13 years after it was first made. The new element will be heaviest yet – and the first new element for five years.

The heaviest known naturally occurring element is uranium, with an atomic number of 92: the number of protons in its nucleus. But since 1941, physicists have been synthesising heavier elements by fusing atoms together. Currently, the heaviest named and recognised element is roentgeniuim at position 111, which was officially named in 2004.

For years, the space next to it has been unceremoniously occupied by the letters Uub, which stand for ununbium, a temporary placeholder name that comes from the Latin words for 1-1-2.

Heck, name it Darwinium, people. It's his birthday.

[DMB]

Good suggestion!

[lpetrich]

I think that it will more likely be named after some eminent nuclear or particle physicist, or else after some notable nuclear or particle research facility. Some possible names:

feynmanium, yukawium, schroedingerium, heisenbergium, diracium, planckium, paulium, thomsonium

livermorium, cornellium, stanfordium, cernium, alamosium

Elements 113 to 116 and 118 have yet to get non-placeholder names; the discoverers of element 117 later retracted their claim.

[Ray Moscow]

Well, we can name a nemotode or something after Feynman. Name element 112 after Darwin.

[lpetrich]

Charles Darwin was a biologist, not a physicist who had worked on quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, or particle physics.

So he'd be out of place there.

Let's turn to some more appropriate candidates for the honor of an element name.

Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker's semi-empirical mass formula was an important contribution to understanding the binding energies of atomic nuclei.

Eugene Paul Wigner, Maria Goeppert-Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen got the 1963 Nobel Prize for working on the nuclear shell model, which explains additional details of nuclear structure.

George Gamow explained alpha decay as quantum-mechanical tunneling -- the alpha particle acts like a wave, enabling it to cross the space nearest the nucleus, where classical mechanics indicates that it could not travel. This is because its electrostatic repulsion from the remaining nucleus is too strong there.

Gamow also did some work on the theory behind the Big Bang.

So might we have

weizsaeckerium, wignerium, goeppertium, gamowium

?

And one final comment: am I the only one here who knows anything about this stuff?

[Ray Moscow]

And one final comment: am I the only one here who knows anything about this stuff?

Probably you know the most about it of anyone here, unless we have some lurking physicists.

Which reminds me to invite somebody here.

[Steviepinhead]

I was kind of hoping for adamantium (http://marvel.com/universe/Adamantium).

[Berthold]

Saganium

After all, Jared Diamond is alive.

[Valheru]

Unobtanium. That's what motorcycles are made out of and it's why they're so rediculously expensive by weight.

I was hoping for Cannabisium.

[Steviepinhead]

I think in sourthern Utah they spell that Kanabium...

It's where people load up on all the good kannabinoids before heading down over the north rim of the Grand Canyon (or, maybe, Grand Kanyon...).

[Jobar]

And one final comment: am I the only one here who knows anything about this stuff?

BS Applied Physics, Ga. Tech, 1977.

Can't claim I could still do much of the math involved, but the general ideas are all very familiar to me.

Though I haven't seen him around in quite a while, HRG, who used to post a lot at II, was a professor of physics. He corrected me a time or two.

[Valheru]

I wonder if there is the possibility of a stable, non-radioactive superheavy artificial element.

[Ray Moscow]

I wonder if there is the possibility of a stable, non-radioactive superheavy artificial element.

There was a good scifi novel (Nerves) written in the 1950's that supposed so, but AFAIK science itself doesn't indicate this possibility.

[Berthold]

I wonder if there is the possibility of a stable, non-radioactive superheavy artificial element.

There was a good scifi novel (Nerves) written in the 1950's that supposed so, but AFAIK science itself doesn't indicate this possibility.
When I was at uni (the Periodic Table was a bit shorter then ;)), it was a mainstream conjecture that there could be further magic numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_number_(physics)) somewhere out there.

[Jobar]

An 'island of stability' was hypothesized, but that 'stability' turns out to be quite relative; such atoms may last milliseconds before decaying, instead of nanoseconds. I'd be willing to bet very, very long odds that no non-radioactive element with more than a hundred protons exists.