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The Search for Stable Superheavy Matter
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14293 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1988 |
3,897 Words |
| Author
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Michael Woods
Michael Woods, a contributing editor for THE WORLD & I, has
received numerous science-writing awards. |
A quarter-century quest by nuclear scientists for the "island of stability" and the treasures supposedly resting there has quietly entered its final stages.
Island of stability is the somewhat whimsical name for a yet-undiscovered region of the Periodic Table of Elements believed by some to contain a whole new group of chemical elements. The elements are called "superheavy" because of their extremely high atomic numbers.
Scientists searching for the superheavies have inherited and in some ways vindicated the medieval tradition of alchemy. For the goal of heavy-element research was also the medieval alchemist's dream--transmutation--changing one element into another. Indeed, heavy-element researchers unknowingly foster the alchemy analogy by speaking, ever so longingly, of finding atomic nuclei that are "magic" or "doubly magic." In this field reputations stand or fall on the ability of experimenters to synthesize the invisible--quantities of new elements so infinitesimal that it strains the imagination. They deal not in grams, milligrams, or even micrograms of an element, but in units of one atom or two.
And their quest has been one of the most diverse, most frustrating, and least-publicized efforts in the history of science. It has involved rocks brought back from the moon's surface, stained glass taken from old Russian churches, manganese nodules scooped up from the ocean floor, meteorites, hot brines sucked from abyssal fractures in the earth's crust, the intensely radioactive debris of nuclear bomb explosions, and targets bombarded in some of the world's most powerful atom smashers.
Unlike many other elements at the high-weight fringe of the periodic table, the superheavies are predicted to be stable. They would have long half-lives, perhaps on the order of millions or billions of years. They thus could have important and perhaps revolutionary practical applications in industry and weapons systems.
Specific applications of the superheavies are as yet unknown. However, scientists still remember that plutonium was also an unknown element before it was discovered as one of the first products of the initial expansion of the periodic table that began in 1940. Plutonium is a bright, silvery metal with a nucleus that fissions, or splits, releasing enormous amounts of energy. The nuclear energy released from one pound of plutonium is equivalent to the chemical energy released from three million pounds of coal--enough to
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