Your Web News in One Place

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

Sign up for GreenGeeks web hosting
August 29, 2019 07:30 pm

Is It Time to Upend the Periodic Table?

The iconic chart of elements has served chemistry well for 150 years. But it's not the only option out there, and scientists are pushing its limits. From a report: The heaviest naturally occurring element on the table is uranium, with the atomic number 92 (because it has 92 protons in its nucleus). But the periodic table contains still more; the heaviest so far is element 118, oganesson, a "super-heavy" element with 118 protons and a half-life of half a millisecond. It was first synthesized in 2002 by Yuri Oganessian and an intercontinental Russian-American team at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, north of Moscow. Starting in 2020, scientists will attempt to synthesize elements 119 and 120, with a newly inaugurated Superheavy Element Factory and an experimental apparatus that is 100 times more sensitive. They hope to reach the "island of stability," a fabled region of the periodic table populated by superheavy elements with greater longevity. Like Pandora's box, the discovery of superheavy elements presents tricky questions, Dr. Oganessian said. Will these elements behave the way the periodic table predicts? So far, only some deviations in behavior are expected. But as the atomic numbers go up, deviations will increase rapidly, challenging the periodic table's schematic integrity. Will the periodic table hold up? Or as Pekka Pyykko, a computational chemist at the University of Helsinki, put it in the title of a 2016 paper: "Is the Periodic Table All Right ('PT OK')?" Probably, with modifications, he concluded. Dr. Pyykko formulated a periodic table that chemically classifies the elements up to atomic number 172. Dr. Pyykko noted, however, that the probability of finding the heaviest of superheavy elements is less than hitting a golf ball in Tokyo and making a hole-in-one on the top of Mount Fuji. If scientists get lucky, the resulting super-superheavy elements might even have nuclei with exotic shapes, like a doughnut. Further reading: Why the Periodic Table of Elements Is More Important Than Ever.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/UciFCKvAy1E/is-it-time-to-upend-the-periodic-table

Share this article:    Share on Facebook
View Full Article

Slashdot

Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..

More About this Source Visit Slashdot