[meteorite-list] Superheavy element found in nature

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:04:24 -0500
Message-ID: <42fc01c8a9cf$a3fc3b40$8250e146_at_ATARIENGINE>

Superheavy Fans!

    If the Unbibium atom was made in your
Super Supernova, it would have to be the
result of lighter elements with extra neutron
goodness being squeezed together hard enough
to merge them into unbibium by a kind of
condensate fusion. Now, supernovae happen
because stars can't even fuse dinky little 26Fe:
it tries; it fails; the failed star collapses -- Boom!
A supernova is the sound of one hand clapping.

    Maybe that's the prime source of Superheavies,
but maybe not.

    One of the best methods for producing the
Superheavies is to bombard an Already-Heavy with
rare neutron-rich isotopes. 20Calcium-48 is a favorite--
and it's cheap -- only $200,000 a gram, a price to
make a meteorite dealer drool...

    Here's an very clear and understandable article
about Superheavies by an expert, Yuri Oganessian:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/19751
Oganessian is the discoverer of Element 118, temp
name ununoctium.

    But, there are other ways to get a really energetic
odd isotope -- cosmic rays. Ion accelerators are a
mere 90% of lightspeed, but cosmic ray nuclei are
in the 99.999...% class.

    So, they claim to have found the Unbibium atoms
in a deposit of thorium, whoops! in 90Thorium-232.
All we need is a cosmic ray that just happens to be
one of the thirty-odd isotopes of Germanium, like
32Ge-60:

90Th-232
   +
32Ge-60
   =
122Ubb-292

    The 32Ge-60 atom would have to have just the right
speed to be able to merge with the thorium without exciting
it so much it just goes to pieces, of course, but cosmic
rays are variable in energy and are made up of every kind
of nuclei from the lightest to the heaviest elements, so
there's some 32Ge-60 out there somewhere.

    If some Superheavies are formed by cold fusion (that's
what they call it -- it's not the other "cold fusion"), then
meteorites might be a better place to look for the naturally
occurring Superheavies than Earth rocks. The cosmic ray
exposure of meteorites is greater, so the minute abundance
of Superheavies might be too.

    If I were going hunting with a mass spectrometer, first
thing I'd do is buy a bag of some NWA with thorium in
its bulk composition. If what they found is unbibium, it's
a light isotope; the "normal" atomic weight of unbibium
would be 324, not 292. It's short 32 neutrons. They also
say it could be an isotope of elements 124 or 126. Oddly,
one theory of how to align the extended periodic table
place cerium, thorium, and unbibium in an extended
"group."

    What we want is to find (a big chunk of) is the elements
on "the Island of Stability" that are long-lived, super-dense,
super-strong, and have other strange properties we can exploit!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability
Here's an extended Periodic Table that shows all the
elements that don't exist, but may exist afterall!
http://www.apsidium.com/ext_pt/expertab.pdf


Sterling K. Webb
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Darren Garrison" <cynapse at charter.net>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 12:14 AM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Superheavy element found in nature


http://arxivblog.com/?p=385

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.3869.pdf

This is meteorite related in that, well, if this finding pans out, then the
element has to be supernova generated, and present in meteorites (and
meteorite
parent bodies), too. And, depending on the chemical properties, maybe even
more
highly concentrated in meteorites than in the Earth's crust. If you look
hard
enough, you might find them in meteorites.

(But mostly, just a cool story)
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Received on Tue 29 Apr 2008 04:04:24 AM PDT