Scientists have been very busy.
Feb. 2nd, 2004 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsycheScientists create two new elements
Russian and American scientists say they have created two new "superheavy" elements that will reside at the extreme end of chemistry's periodic table of elements.
Just a few atoms of the newly discovered elements, 113 and 115, existed for split seconds after being created in a particle accelerator. They represent unusual forms of matter with properties that go well beyond those of the 92 elements that occur naturally on Earth.
Superheavies may be abundantly generated by supernova explosions in stars. Or perhaps they were fused during the fiery moments that signaled the dawn if the universe.
Here on the ground, such tiny amounts of superheavies formed in atom smashers probably will never find an everyday use.
Yet their "birth" adds details to a broader -- and very competitive -- scientific inquiry to establish a single, unified theory that would explain the physical forces that govern the behavior of all matter.
Russian and American scientists say they have created two new "superheavy" elements that will reside at the extreme end of chemistry's periodic table of elements.
Just a few atoms of the newly discovered elements, 113 and 115, existed for split seconds after being created in a particle accelerator. They represent unusual forms of matter with properties that go well beyond those of the 92 elements that occur naturally on Earth.
Superheavies may be abundantly generated by supernova explosions in stars. Or perhaps they were fused during the fiery moments that signaled the dawn if the universe.
Here on the ground, such tiny amounts of superheavies formed in atom smashers probably will never find an everyday use.
Yet their "birth" adds details to a broader -- and very competitive -- scientific inquiry to establish a single, unified theory that would explain the physical forces that govern the behavior of all matter.