Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Chemistry => Topic started by: annie123 on 18/03/2015 17:53:15
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I heard a couple of years ago that a new element had been discovered , only named by its number. Has any more work been done to explore its properties/structure? or has it been given a proper name?
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New discoveries are progressiong, with heavier elements being created all the time, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transuranium_element#Discovery_and_naming_of_transuranium_elements
However, these elements are generated 1 atom at a time, and last an extremely short period before they decay, which means that it's not really possible to do chemical experiments on them.
The international organisation responsible for awarding official names to elements wants to see repeatable evidence that the element has been created, and takes a long time to define a new name. In the meantime, the element uses a temporary name created from the atomic number (derived from Latin); because these elements are above 100, they all start with "un"*.
The "Holy Grail" of researchers is the hypothetical "Island of Stability (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability)" where a group of heavy elements might be stable enough to actually do experiments in the laboratory. But it's hard to build atoms in these sizes.
*The premise of the movie "Avatar" was discovery of a planet which had deposits of a rare element "unobtainium"...
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I didn't realise that unobtanium was an element. In the aviation business it's an alloy that was last made in 1925 and used in whatever vintage aircraft you have just broken, which is why it costs ten times as much to repair the plane as it is worth in flyable condition. Perhaps I should spend more time watching trashy movies. But this does at last explain why it might be worth mining other planets.
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Unobtainium is not an element. It is an ingenious play on words! It sounds almost like an element of the unXYZ class, but the root of the name is "unobtainable," as in, you know they will never ever get it...