Posted on 07/25/2024 9:27:52 AM PDT by AdmSmith
Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, announced today that they have for the first time used a beam of titanium to make a known superheavy element, livermorium — element 116. After upgrading the lab’s equipment, the team plans to use similar techniques to try to produce element 120. The heaviest element that has been made so far is oganesson, element 118, which was first synthesized in 2002.
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Why does element 43 not exist?
Early chemists puzzled over why they could not discover element number 43, but now we know why – its isotopes are relatively short-lived compared to the age of the Earth, so any technetium present when the Earth formed has long since decayed.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Why+does+element+43+not+exist
[snip] A study in 1976 by a group of American researchers from several universities proposed that primordial superheavy elements, mainly livermorium, unbiquadium, unbihexium, and unbiseptium, with half-lives exceeding 500 million years[48] could be a cause of unexplained radiation damage (particularly radiohalos) in minerals. [/snip]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbihexium#Possible_natural_occurrence
Chemists think there is an island of stable elements in the 130’s. If they can get to it, there may be useful elements there.
Only upto uranium. Everything after that is synthesized.
In 1981 Barry Marshall began working with Robin Warren, the Royal Perth Hospital pathologist who, two years earlier, discovered the gut could be overrun by hardy, corkscrew-shaped bacteria called Helicobacter pylori. Biopsying ulcer patients and culturing the organisms in the lab, Marshall traced not just ulcers but also stomach cancer to this gut infection. The cure, he realized, was readily available: antibiotics.
But mainstream gastroenterologists were dismissive, holding on to the old idea that ulcers were caused by stress.
Unable to make his case in studies with lab mice (because H. pylori affects only primates) and prohibited from experimenting on people, Marshall... ran an experiment on ...himself. He took some H. pylori from the gut of an ailing patient, stirred it into a broth, and drank it....Back in the lab, he biopsied his own gut, culturing H. pylori and proving unequivocally that bacteria were the underlying cause of ulcers.
For their work on H. pylori, Marshall and Warren shared a 2005 Nobel Prize. Today the standard of care for an ulcer is treatment with an antibiotic.
At least mathematically, it does. One thing about the periodic table is its predictability. Most elements were found by the predictable characteristics they had and not the elements themselves.
The Island of Stability exists, mathematically speaking. Since, most other elements were found mathematically at first, it’s reasonable to believe that the Island of Stability does exist.
Once it is found, we can either develop the level of energy to create these elements or there may be ways to create them than than nuclear bombardment of the nucleus.
I understand very well the budget problem, but that could be solved by simply removing a lot of entitlements, subsidies and tax breaks, and especially reforming the DOD procurement system. That's simple to see and impossible to do politically.
I strongly suspect nothing will be done about any of it until we face national bankruptcy or a major war forces a complete reorganization.
Now that is an impressive story.
Brave man to try an experimental medical test on himself.
Thanks for posting.
re: the articles pictures
That’s absolutely the worst machine I’ve ever seen. Cables dangling everywhere, nothing routed or leveled. The “team leader” is tatted up, their control room is a disaster, look at the building it’s in, old cinderblocks & wood beams.
I hope they electrocute themselves.
It looks like a typical lab. The lineup is only available in one copy and it changes over time. It is thus not an industrial design for production.
Well said!
Regarding the ubiquitous present of Chinese nationals in our institutions.
A couple of years ago I had a contract to represent a company at an NSF symposium. All the panels and discussion groups were dominated number wise by Chinese nationals! Many of those representing NSF were Chinese nationals. I guarantee all there on the US taxpayer dime.
Thank you.
China has plenty of people to send to all (formerly?) first world countries to infiltrate science and industry to syphon up all the knowledge they can. Bad move by the West. (Meanwhile Western kids are dumbed-down and indoctrinated with lunatic ideas.)
Somewhere down the line there’s going to be a showdown, and it won’t be pretty.
Yes, I agree, it is. But we had to get to the point where those elements were of interest in the first place. They used to be oddities, not useful in metallurgy or most chemistry. I'm not saying super heavy elements will see useful applications, but even just doing this unapplicable research will lead to the development of new methods and instrumentation and train young scientists to *think* and solve problems.
I say that applied science fields can be traced back to and are based on formerly "useless" basic research. There need not be a 100% correlation in each and every case.
What you want is research money with no accountability. That kills wealth necessary to fund other more productive research.
I've long not wanted research money. I moved on shortly after getting my degree and went into a professional field as my own boss. When trillions are spent (wasted?) on "social projects," what do a few billion here and there matter for more esoteric research that might only broaden our general knowledge of things and creates problem-solving people that can move on to the "real world" later?
Agree!
Honestly, do you really think I'm not familiar with that argument? I have NEVER on this thread argued against investment in basic research, especially given that I've been doing world class basic research for ove 20 years. My work was paid for privately, entirely within our own family on a middle class income. I would argue that much of what I've learned is of more value than this work extending the periodic table.
So I ask that you apply the following test to show what I mean: Name me a single technology useful to the world at large with its existence entirely dependent upon a single element with an atomic weight greater than Lawrencium.
Lawrencium was discovered a long time ago. I was going to college near the Berkeley Lab at the time. Reading the Tao of Physics, grooving on what Murray Gell-Mann was finding... Tripping out on the metrology for the diamond turning lathe making laser mirrors at Lawrence Livermore.
I've been there.
My argument is based upon the relative cost benefit of investments in basic research. There is a great deal of work that goes begging that could be done for far less than this. From what I can tell, with this kind of work, the ROI just isn't there and remains very unlikely.
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