{"id":2545,"date":"2008-04-29T08:07:55","date_gmt":"2008-04-29T08:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/04\/29\/a-stable-heavy-element\/"},"modified":"2008-04-29T08:07:55","modified_gmt":"2008-04-29T08:07:55","slug":"a-stable-heavy-element","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/04\/29\/a-stable-heavy-element\/","title":{"rendered":"A Stable Heavy Element?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Swans on Tea<\/a>, a new article on the arxiv reports the possible discovery of a new stable element<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

What they did was fire one thorium nucleus after another through a mass spectrometer to see how heavy each was. Thorium has an atomic number of 90 and occurs mainly in two isotopes with atomic weights of 230 and 232. All these showed up in the measurements along with a various molecular oxides and hydrides that form for technical reasons.<\/p>\n

But something else showed up too. An element with a weight of 292 and an atomic number of around 122. That’s an extraordinary claim and quite rightly the team has been diligent in attempting to exclude alternative explanations such as th epresence of exotic molecules formed from impurities in the thorium sample or from the hydrocarbon in oil used in the vacuum pumping equipment). But these have all been ruled out, say Marinov and his buddies.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You know, I see a lot of science stories that sound like kookery, but this is the first in a while that sounds like Golden Age SF. I mean, really, discovering an entirely new element by mass spectroscopy? Isn’t that the start of a “Doc” Smith story?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Swans on Tea, a new article on the arxiv reports the possible discovery of a new stable element: What they did was fire one thorium nucleus after another through a mass spectrometer to see how heavy each was. Thorium has an atomic number of 90 and occurs mainly in two isotopes with atomic weights… Continue reading A Stable Heavy Element?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,7,11,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-experiment","category-physics","category-science","category-sf","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}