I used to joke that if you took a neutral neutron star, threw in a proton, then put an electron in orbit; then you'd have the only gravitationally bound very heavy isotope of hydrogen. Maybe it wasn't really a joke?
How does gravity interact with the wave function of the electron? How do you determine the orbit of something that doesn’t have a specific location or velocity?
Bismuth fascinates me. I have a few crystals of it on my desk. It has no stable isotopes, but it's _so close_ to stability it has a half-life far longer than the age of the universe -- yet at the same time, a lump of it will do the near-impossible and occasionally kick out a positron.
@@Bob-of-Zoid How would they? They're basically positively charged beta particles, they can just pass into a live human if accelerated beyond what their creation provides.
@Bob-of-Zoid you receive, on a daily basis, a shower of muons from outter space - as well as a bit of anti matter and some gamma rays and X rays. Normally it's very low doses unless you're climbing mountains all the time, or spend most of your time flying balloons. Pilots and stewardesses do receivo plenty of radiation from outter space, equivalent to several Xray exams per year. So far you've survived thru it, haven't you? So the ocassional electron-positron annihilation within your body won't kill you
@@Bob-of-ZoidI’m not sure that a lone positron created in a context like this will have enough energy to do any really meaningful damage. Correct me if I’m wrong, of course!
@@alazarbisrat1978 the island of stability refers to semi-stable elements with a much higher atomic number than we can make at the moment, all theoretical at the moment
@@AnonNopleb maybe they don't travel nearly as far because they'd be solids? well in that case through the age of the universe it should have reached us anyway so you might be right.
😂 I imagine stars spontaneously starting to shoot around the universe and crash into each other. Me on the roof at night seeing all this thinking about a jazzy tune..
I actually had a paper on the so called hypernova models. There are a few candidates for extremely powerful explosions, orders of magnitude stronger than nova, and the means by which they happen. Usually, you need a massive, very hot star with a very low metalicity. They include things like pair-instability supernova (which requires stars between 130 and 250 solar masses). It was all early theoretical models back in 2011 when I wrote the paper, I see a few have come up since, but it is still little more than theory. We have SOME observations to support them, but it's all in fairly early stages yet.
I always struggled with Chemistry back at school, to the point where I didn't even really understood what the numbers in front of the molecules's name actually denote, how they correlate, and how one could deduce information on the molecule's stability (or lack thereof) from them. Of course I was later in my adult life able to find out that information through self-study, BUT: your brief explanation with visual aids was _the_ best, most succinct yet intuitive explanation of the this framework that I've seen to date. Very well done, and this also demonstrates precisely why I love this channel... you neither put on airs aka "Everyone _should_ know that by heart", nor do you dumb it down to the lowest common denominator; a great balance, and inspiring for me as an on/off tutor for Y3 to Y8 kids.
Stability aside, the numbers are pretty basic stuff, it's literally as simple as one being the number of protons and the other being the number of protons and neutrons combined. Like, I'm just wondering how can it possibly be explained less clearly, if your school chemistry teacher managed to make something this simple sound confusing, that's impressive in its own way.
@@HanakoSeishinI believe it, my high school chemistry teacher was amazingly talented at explaining the most fascinating things in the most confusing, boring way possible. I'm sure if I hadn't already taught myself some of the subjects he covered I would've been screwed lol
Welcome to having a terrible teacher. The atomic number just is the number of electrons an atom has when it has a neutral charge. The atomic WEIGHT is a number that corresponds to it's weight found in nature as an average of all isotopes of the element. Carbon has about 12.01. If you get Avogadro's Number of those atoms you end up with 12.01 grams of Carbon. If memory doesn't fail. If I'm incorrect anybody, by all means correct me. It's been 40 years. I don't know any way to figure out stability of an atom. Usually the number of protons == the number of neutrons. I think.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Przybylski's Star! Spectral analysis of this star suggests many heavy elements are present such as uranium and ytterbium. This could very well be remnants of a kilonova explosion which produced island of stability elements which decayed into these rarer daughter elements.
Exactly!! Now the question is: how these radioactive elements got into that damned star... it even has lots of plutonium!! I remember Carl Sagan speculated that it could be a technosignature by an alien civ, demonstrating its presence to potential observers
@@SMiki55 To be honest, I can never remember how to spell the astronomer's name, so I have to google a phonetic approximation. His discovery is sadly very underappreciated.
Can we take a moment to appreciate that the knowledge shared with the first couple of minutes of this video took hundreds of years to compile. We are fortunate to live in a time where this so well understood and is one of the reasons why I watch Space Time and other channels to see what is coming next.
So there's hope yet for Vibranium swords and shields? Joking aside, I have always found it fascinating that so many of the heavier elements including several essential to life only exist in the Universe because of neutron star mergers. In other words, the merger of two actual neutron stars eons ago is why we exist, and are here writing and reading comments on a science video. Rather mind-bending stuff!
Ah, so trying to take a picture of a kilonova is just like taking a video of my dog doing something funny. By the time I get the camera rolling, the best part is over. 😞
I've played the STAY THEEEEEERE!!!!😠 Game so many times it's not funny! But it's the only way to get a good one every now and then.😼 I chase my cat with the camera, but also all of the wild critters around here. 🥰Too many, and too freaking cute!
Same with little kids. Nearly impossible to capture their cutest moments on camera. With kids - unlike dogs - you can say "do it again" and record, but it almost always looks contrived and faked because it's not genuine.
9:51 There is a missing step in explanation of how NS merger-ejected neutronium is converted into free neutron flux (or the thick fast moving soup of neutrons) . That is why in space would individual neutrons get unbound from their native neutronium droplets so that being liberated they can participate in r-process to get bound again. What if instead of intense neutron flux we will speak of neutrons beta-decay happening inside the neutronium droplets. Beta decays would heat the neutronium droplets and charge them up and eventually will cause the droplets to fission into smaller droplets. While r-process builds heavy nuclei bottom-up by rapid successive neutron captures, I argue that some other process takes place in NS-merger ejecta: top-down process of neutronium droplets beta-decaying and fissioning into heavy nuclei. Thus beta-process and not r-process.
Once again, thank you to the entire time for everything you do to make this videos freely available to the public. The topics are fascinating, and Matt's passion for the project is also hugely evident (okay, so I'm a sucker for the dry wit).
define 'expensive' please. Economic understanding (and more so mainstream economic 'knowledge') does a VERY bad job at what is possible and what 'expensive' really means - which is why I ask for UR definition of it.
@@joansparky4439 lol what wierd definition do you even expect? He simply pointed out the diminishing marginal utility of modern science. He is not going to write a PhD in economics for some subjective definition. I can see his point tho, but the state is wasting ressources on so many levels why not on science?
@@Jpz_38t _"He simply pointed out the diminishing marginal utility of modern science."_ No, he pointed at the 'expenses' of undertaking this science without real thought if that 'expense' actually is "real or not". His 'understanding' of 'expensive' is simply wrong from where I stand on the subject - what I know about it. That science would not be expensive at all if: 1) he would account properly 2) our economic models were plausible (which they aren't). The statement is simply incorrect as it is based on wrong assumptions and misunderstandings.
1: If a neutron star was bombarded with enough alpha and/or beta radiation in excess to its exposure to electrons, would the protons survive as part of the neutron star? 2: If "yes" to 1, would a proton-containing neutron star qualify as an atom, or would its inability to be stably orbited by electrons disqualify it? 3: If "yes" to 1, is there a point at which the a proton-containing neutron star would be destabilized by the number of protons? 4: If "yes" to 3, would that star then undergo nuclear decay? Edit: I'm a chemist whose work has become increasingly focused on admin and procedural documents, so this is all well outside my wheel house, not matter how many videos about these sorts of things I have watched. Thanks for the responses, especially @lukabozic5. It's honestly getting a Ponder Stibbons-style "'That may be the wrong sort of question to ask," kind of response is always the most interesting.
Look into how neutron stars form. Normal stellar matter already contains large amounts of protons, but they are converted into neutrons due to the intense gravitational field and quantum stuff.
Interesting questions. But you have to keep in mind that a neutron star is not only hold together by the strong nuclear force, but also by gravity, which in turn is opposed by the degeneration pressure of the neutrons (because they are fermions). That alone would in my opinion disqualify a neutron star as an atom.
@@mezu-e I may be wrong, but it was my impression that part of that involved be crushed together with electrons. without a source of negative charges, I am unaware of a means of converting protons to neutrons.
@@tremmlor9807 I was keeping that in mind, but you do make an interesting point regarding the whether or not an atom is defined by the structure and composition of its components or by the forces acting on those components.
I think the Soviets called it moscovium. It was a psy-op against Soviet Russia that produced an element but had pretty much had no usefulness due to its short life.
Science fiction stories occasionally feature some new element that has amazing properties (usually named something like "unobtainium"). But higher elements require protons, and the half-lives of those elements are measured in femtoseconds or less. I would guess that most people believe there can be new elements that exist within the range of ordinary elements, not knowing that it's equivalent to finding a new integer, say between 25 and 26.
Do we know what the absorption bands for these new Elements are? Is it possible that these are already out there but we just don't know what we're looking at?
I'm not sure if there are ways to calculate those reliably since anything beyond light elements would be very hard to calculate even numerically(100+ electrons). But I'm not familiar with that area so I might be very wrong
Thing is, if we'd see lines that do not match known elements, everyone would be on that right away. So my guess is that we don't have any spectroscopic data that is out of line that way
@@sensorer If the element is in low abundance we might mistake those tiny spikes as noise. Could be worth investigating. Then again, multiple observations basically remove noise from the equation.
@@sensorer No this is definitely not something we can calculate. To calculate that we would need an accurate wavefunction of an atomic nucleaus, so far we only have the first element and even that wave function takes like 10 textbook pages to explain. Anything larger gets exponentially more difficult to calculate. We use models to make predictions but you need real data to verify those predictions. Those models may work for some elements but be completely inaccurate for others, and you won't know if it is accurate for heavier elements even if the model is 99.9999% accurate for lighter elements. Means nothing.
The great thing with neutron stars is that since they're made up of protons too, each one in the observable universe is basically its own unique element, with an atomic number in the 10^50s So really the periodic table should be a lot longer, though the chemical properties get pretty samey after a while
We're already past the point where it's meaningful to talk about the table being periodic in the conventional sense. The periodicity of the table originally reflected the similarity of chemical properties shared by elements in the same column. This is attributable to the behavior of chemically relevant electrons, which are the same as you go down a column in the table. To a point... As the elements get heavier, the behavior of their electrons becomes less predictable on those terms.
Finally another video on this topic 🥰😊 it seems like you are almost only one covering this topic on YT which seems wierd but fascinating at the same time
The stable island probably loses its island in the tsunami of particles in that environment. Its half life is likely to be longer than the time until the next collision or capture.
@@nghiado9895 Well said, and thank you. I've been scolded for lazy writing. I prefer your method of help. That first bit was weird to read without the apostrophe.
Minor need for clarification at 15:48 . Beta decays (and most other decays) leave the new element in an Excited state. The excited state provides enough energy for the isotope to decay, without that energy the isotope would be stable and with a much longer half-life.
Earlier this year I attended a colloquium where a theoretical physicist was presenting an interesting method of probing the nucleus and studying why the nucleus is stable. I was elated when he brought up neutron stars! Incredible that we can use massive celestial objects to better understand minuscule objects like the nucleus.
I always thought some kind of high momentum/neutron star collision would produce so more more energy for heavier elements, this is one of my favorites so far on PBS Space Time
Unobtainium always struck me as a temporary name for an element. So if Unobtainium was ever found and then named something else you'd never be able to get Unobtainium.
Ok, I have a general question. We know that p+ and n exist because we see them outside of nuclei. But within nuclei, it seems to me, as a crank layman, that the existence of *separate* nucleons has to be something of a simplified model of the ongoing QCD interactions, right? What we really have in a nucleus ought to be something like a quark-gluon plasma - whatever structure exists in there seems like it would be more like waves on the ocean or in air: a very temporary structure that is an emergent property of a completely different process. And yes, of course, if we look through the lens of QFT, I suppose that seems less odd. Still I would like to hear more about this at some point. It seems relevant to the questions surrounding, trans-uranics, but also more generally to how nuclear physics *actually* works (including the weirdness of the weak force).
Neutrons and protons consist of triples of quarks, fundamental particles bound by tunnels in the gluon field, so they are in more sense than not individual particles. Although sometimes the quarks in a nucleon attract quarks in another nearby nucleon, resulting in the strong nuclear force. BTW the strong nuclear force is a quasiforce caused by the strong force.
No, they're quite complex, to the point that we're not even sure of the spectra of elements like Californium. We MAY have detected them in Przybylski's star, but cannot be sure.
12:55 technically, though the elements may have "decayed long ago", instruments, such as JWST, may not have decayed yet...from our perspective -- despite them having "actually decayed" long ago. That's why the JWST is sometimes referred to as a "time machine". Using infrared to determine elements may be difficult, though I'm not sure if it's technically impossible, unlike spectroscopic techniques from optical telescopes.
The definition of Coulomb Force on screen at 3:12 is sloppy. It uses "respectively" incorrectly (the order is reversed) and seems to just give up at the end talking only about opposite charges. Other than that, great video.
2:16: “they ensure they don’t get so close together that the repulsive tendencies overwhelm the strong attractive force?” Sounds like I needed some of those in my last marriage!! Heyyoooooooooooo
@@RoZaxTheGreatif muons didn’t decay quickly, maybe a mixture of anti-muons and electrons? I guess that wouldn’t have a very complex structure, as I guess it would largely resemble hydrogen? I don’t think muons stick to other muons, so you wouldn’t get heavier nuclei.. For it to count as “matter”, I think it needs to have Fermions? So, would need to have either quarks, leptons (electrons, muons, tauons), or neutrinos? (Well, of the fundamental particles currently known…) I guess neutrons by themselves aren’t stable, so maybe considering only hadrons that are approximately stable by themselves is too restrictive? Could some of the other hadrons be stable enough if bound to some other hadrons? I don’t know. If so, maybe such a nucleus, with electrons in orbit around it, could be considered “not an atom”? Hmm.. could some other arrangement of protons and neutrons be stable other than “a nucleus”? Like… a nucleus can be excited, with there being internal motion within the nucleus… maybe if you had multiple excited nuclei, there could be some interaction between them that keep them from going to individually lower energy states?? Idk
There are exotic atoms formed by an electron and a positron orbiting each other, as well as a proton and an anti-proton orbiting each other. They have chemical properties vaguely similar to hydrogen, but both decay very rapidly (the proton variety more so) as both members emmit energy while they move so they spiral in until both annihilate each other. Probably throwing in some pions or some weird combination of quarks and anti quarks could stabilize the thing, then you'd have a form of "matter" with very different properties to regular one
The main reason you don't fall through the floor is because your body's electrons repel the floor's electrons. All known interactable matter is some combinations of protons, neutrons, and electrons.
I know i am going to sound like some spoiled modern age conformist, but that loud noise at the end of the video (starting at 17:26)really disrupted my attempts at falling asleep while listening to the rest of the video. Any chance it could be done away with or just reduced in volume? 😅
Neutrons are unstable, unless they interact with protons through the strong nuclear force. And with how short ranged it is, you run into a packing problem.
I will make a gross simplification here. Weak decay. Neutrons decay outside of the nucleus in about 15 minutes and the only reason they are stable in the nucleus is because the sum of energies between proton and neutron is less than the individual energies of two particles. You add too many neutrons to a single proton, you violate that law and it becomes more energy favorable for a neutron to decay to a proton via beta decay or if it's above the neutron drip line via neutron emission. Your hydrogen-8 is above the theoretical limit of neutrons (above the neutron drip line) so the neutron emission should occur
Sphere packing and quantum chromodynamics. Hydrogen 8 with minimal atomic mass change would probably end up being Lithium-7 quite quickly. So for the sphere packing part of the example we just need to count up for the configuration of balls. 1 ball is just 1 ball. 2 balls, form a line. 3 Balls form a triangle (and would much rather be a line and a single ball). 4 balls form a triangular pyramid, also known as a tetrahedron (very stable). 5 balls create a triangular bipyramid. 6 balls create an octohedron-like shape, or just 2 triangles of balls pushed together with an offset of 60 degrees (by shape: square of balls, a ball above and below the square in the middle). 7 is with a pillar ball ontop. The pillar ball is always the a proton to isolate the charge as much as possible. Each of the triangles therefore has a single proton in them. The idea is to create balanced shapes and even distrobutions of protons within the shape. "Add neutrons as necessary" to help with the balancing... when you can. Also remember, protons do not undergo spontaneous decay on their own so that if a proton ever leaves, it means it's just no longer bound by the original group and has now become a free proton, or a hydrogen ion. (there is a plausible way to decay a proton on its own, we don't talk about it).
@@VagueHandWaving For his Hydrogen example you are correct but in general this is incorrect. For higher Z you need isospin symmetry broken as the Coulomb force grows, you need way more N to interact via strong force to counteract the Coulomb force
"Thank you to Raycon for supporting PBS...." We truly live in the darkest timeline. If the Public Broadcasting Station needs to take money from sketchy companies that slap their logo on cheapo no-actual-brand earbuds (that's what Raycons are), then something is *seriously wrong*.
When you have to deal with money, revenue or loss, things tend to get complicated real quick. I'm not saying I'm happy about it, but - sigh - it seems to be how things are, and have been for a long time.
@@tabularasa0606 you dont need 1500 usd sony earbuds, 20$ moondrops sounds just fine and for 100$ you can get very good audio quality if you buy wired IEMs.
I think that one of those elements can contain the power that others cannot, and that is to initiate a black hole, which means that whenever we figure out how to make those elements, we will finally observe the particles that interact with gravity itself.
particles dont initiate a blackhole, mass does. If you have enough mass close together, then light cannot go through it anymore. Thats all a blackhole is. In theory every particle is a blackhole if you can somehow compress it down small enough
I pretend that I'm taking random elements that aren't on the periodic table every time I take my Flintstone vitamin everyday. Me: *Opens Flintstones bottle* Oh yes.. my daily dose of Extremium, catium, cyclonium and pandemonium supplements. I'm 39.
I hate the "new element" sci fi trope because we have a literally infinite space of possible chemical compounds, and beyond that we also have infinite ways of arranging different compounds into materials and meta-materials with amazing properties, and sci fi always goes for the implausible "new elements!" that would either half a half life of 1 femtosecond, or if they exist, they'll just be extremely heavy metallic nothings.
Californiums' radiation has been known to cause humans within the vicinity to decay into a pile of needles, human skat, crack tents, and broken dreams.
Strange, you mention the Island of Stability existing around atomic numbers 110-to-114 ( as stated at 7:52 ) but I had incorrectly thought the theoretical island referred to much more stable elements at much, much higher atomic numbers, well above 130. The diagram at 11:00 shows a green area representing some short-lived stability around 123-to-128 protons, beyond which were the (so I incorrectly thought) hypothesized super-stable heavier elements. I want spaceships built with atoms heavier than 140 protons each!
Is there any way to predict the actual physical properties that, say, the hypothetical super-stable Element 180 would manifest? Like, what would a gram of it look like, or feel like in your hand?
You would need to know first about nuclear physics, whether it's stable or not. For that you need a robust theory where as inputs you would have 2 inputs (number of protons and number of neutrons) and it would give you the properties of the nucleus. Such robust theory doesn't exist, it's a dream of low energy nuclear physics to have such an equation or set of equations. Nobel worthy dream. Now that we are done with the nuclear physics part you need an atomic physicist to look what kind of electron shells would be formed, look at the behaviour of electrons in the outer shells, especially considering, using your example, 180 protons would imply large electron orbitals and consequently heavy relativistic effects. Much easier job to do than the nuclear physicist mentioned above but still hard
To some extent. For example, the element below mercury should be a liquid. Melting points, boiling points and appearance are reasonably easy to guess, as well a some chemistry. Of course their intense radioactivity changes everything.
if you guys haven't already figured out that we are akin to the electrons and the planets and galaxies gravity is just a scaled up version of the WNF/SNF, and galactic clusters are akin to cells, and we just live somewhere on an infinite scale, then you aren't doing "theoretical science" quite right yet.
Well, that's interesting. But I will give one comparison here - you decide for yourself if it is appropriate. If you seriously want to stop a fight between two people, how many people do you need? Ideally just one, if they both use their senses and haven't completely lost control of themselves. That is if reason is present! But when there is no reason, this number is much higher. For such persons, who no longer have the presence of reason, being squeezed into a closed room means that they have to be immobilized, arms, legs, and body. In such a situation, 5 persons of the same constitution would control one of the two persons. So if we transfer this knowledge and understanding to heavier atomic elements, we find that these are now groups of people that we have to immobilize in a given space so that the situation calms down and stabilizes. And here we have an external influence that comes into context. What happens to a group of people who are trying to calm down the people in their group and another such group of so-called brawlers and their pacifiers comes up against them? As the battle of instinct against reason has now arisen here, the men of reason will withdraw, and the struggle will rage between the two sides of instinct, until the men without reason are reduced to a number that the men of reason can control. This would be a comparison of humans with atomic bodies, of course I did not forget about electrons! Electrons are information bodies that influence the mental state of people in groups and their awareness of the surroundings in which they are located. We also have other forces that influence the group, but you can explain this yourself as you wish.
I used to joke that if you took a neutral neutron star, threw in a proton, then put an electron in orbit; then you'd have the only gravitationally bound very heavy isotope of hydrogen. Maybe it wasn't really a joke?
As it happens there is a shell around a neutron star where some protons still exist. So, more like a gravitationally-bound Element 10^50
neutronium would get quite the promotion
How does gravity interact with the wave function of the electron? How do you determine the orbit of something that doesn’t have a specific location or velocity?
@@AdrianBoykowhat would it “orbit” anyway? It would just find a positive ion somewhere.
Gravitational lensing do suggest that gravity interact with electromagnetic wave.
I once vacationed on the Island of Stability. It was boring -- nothing ever happened.
I loved it, the moment I had to leave I just broke down.
But everyone was normal.
The island decayed before I got there
guess it was relatively stable
They like everyone on that island except some guy called Victor Ninov.
Bismuth fascinates me. I have a few crystals of it on my desk. It has no stable isotopes, but it's _so close_ to stability it has a half-life far longer than the age of the universe -- yet at the same time, a lump of it will do the near-impossible and occasionally kick out a positron.
Watch out for those positrons! When they hit your head they normally cause a neuron storm! It may be rare, but it could fry your brain for good!🤕
@@Bob-of-Zoid
How would they? They're basically positively charged beta particles, they can just pass into a live human if accelerated beyond what their creation provides.
@Bob-of-Zoid you receive, on a daily basis, a shower of muons from outter space - as well as a bit of anti matter and some gamma rays and X rays. Normally it's very low doses unless you're climbing mountains all the time, or spend most of your time flying balloons. Pilots and stewardesses do receivo plenty of radiation from outter space, equivalent to several Xray exams per year. So far you've survived thru it, haven't you? So the ocassional electron-positron annihilation within your body won't kill you
@@Bob-of-ZoidI’m not sure that a lone positron created in a context like this will have enough energy to do any really meaningful damage. Correct me if I’m wrong, of course!
It decays by emitting a 3 MeV alpha particle, which isn’t going very far. It’s half life is a billion times the age of the universe.
3:40
Bismuth-209: I might not be stable forever, but I think I deserve an honorable mention, with my half-life of 19 quintillion years...
is this stability possible in the island of stability?
@@alazarbisrat1978 the island of stability refers to semi-stable elements with a much higher atomic number than we can make at the moment, all theoretical at the moment
@@safestate8750 but if they last nearly as long as that one, we could have plenty of new cool materials to play with
@@alazarbisrat1978 I suspect not. If they had half-lifes as long as that, we would have found them already as naturally occurring elements.
@@AnonNopleb maybe they don't travel nearly as far because they'd be solids? well in that case through the age of the universe it should have reached us anyway so you might be right.
I am so glad this channel is going strong after all of these years. Truly, one of my most favorite channels for science and education
What started out as searching for the big questions spiralled into the rest for curiosities sake for me.
Whenever I hear the word, "kilonova" imagine a bossa nova song that's so good it's killer.
😂 I imagine stars spontaneously starting to shoot around the universe and crash into each other. Me on the roof at night seeing all this thinking about a jazzy tune..
That’d be kiranova
That cheese deserves a like 😂
I actually had a paper on the so called hypernova models. There are a few candidates for extremely powerful explosions, orders of magnitude stronger than nova, and the means by which they happen. Usually, you need a massive, very hot star with a very low metalicity. They include things like pair-instability supernova (which requires stars between 130 and 250 solar masses). It was all early theoretical models back in 2011 when I wrote the paper, I see a few have come up since, but it is still little more than theory. We have SOME observations to support them, but it's all in fairly early stages yet.
Written by Antonio Carlos Jobismuth ;-)
The minecraft periodic table shirt is fire.
I want it as a poster now
i have it in a book@@SabethDrake
And it’s from the beta versions, as said on the shirt. He’s still rocking it since a long time ago!
@@Tryh4rd3rr yupp goateddd
I always struggled with Chemistry back at school, to the point where I didn't even really understood what the numbers in front of the molecules's name actually denote, how they correlate, and how one could deduce information on the molecule's stability (or lack thereof) from them.
Of course I was later in my adult life able to find out that information through self-study, BUT: your brief explanation with visual aids was _the_ best, most succinct yet intuitive explanation of the this framework that I've seen to date.
Very well done, and this also demonstrates precisely why I love this channel... you neither put on airs aka "Everyone _should_ know that by heart", nor do you dumb it down to the lowest common denominator; a great balance, and inspiring for me as an on/off tutor for Y3 to Y8 kids.
Stability aside, the numbers are pretty basic stuff, it's literally as simple as one being the number of protons and the other being the number of protons and neutrons combined. Like, I'm just wondering how can it possibly be explained less clearly, if your school chemistry teacher managed to make something this simple sound confusing, that's impressive in its own way.
Your teacher must've been REALLY bad.
@@lajoswinkler Could have been him not paying attention, not necessarily the teacher.
@@HanakoSeishinI believe it, my high school chemistry teacher was amazingly talented at explaining the most fascinating things in the most confusing, boring way possible. I'm sure if I hadn't already taught myself some of the subjects he covered I would've been screwed lol
Welcome to having a terrible teacher. The atomic number just is the number of electrons an atom has when it has a neutral charge. The atomic WEIGHT is a number that corresponds to it's weight found in nature as an average of all isotopes of the element. Carbon has about 12.01. If you get Avogadro's Number of those atoms you end up with 12.01 grams of Carbon.
If memory doesn't fail. If I'm incorrect anybody, by all means correct me. It's been 40 years.
I don't know any way to figure out stability of an atom. Usually the number of protons == the number of neutrons. I think.
Finally! An episode of Spacetime I understood from start to finish.
Yeah my brain usually maxes out somewhere between 50% and 70% way through
😂@@longboardfella5306
We were truly blessed
😂 me too
I'm surprised you didn't mention Przybylski's Star! Spectral analysis of this star suggests many heavy elements are present such as uranium and ytterbium. This could very well be remnants of a kilonova explosion which produced island of stability elements which decayed into these rarer daughter elements.
Exactly!! Now the question is: how these radioactive elements got into that damned star... it even has lots of plutonium!! I remember Carl Sagan speculated that it could be a technosignature by an alien civ, demonstrating its presence to potential observers
thank you for mentioning this!!!
@@JosePineda-cy6om sorry that was me hiding my plutonium stash from the space cops🥺
Polish surname pronunciation scares off yet another foreigner
@@SMiki55 To be honest, I can never remember how to spell the astronomer's name, so I have to google a phonetic approximation. His discovery is sadly very underappreciated.
Can we take a moment to appreciate that the knowledge shared with the first couple of minutes of this video took hundreds of years to compile. We are fortunate to live in a time where this so well understood and is one of the reasons why I watch Space Time and other channels to see what is coming next.
So there's hope yet for Vibranium swords and shields?
Joking aside, I have always found it fascinating that so many of the heavier elements including several essential to life only exist in the Universe because of neutron star mergers. In other words, the merger of two actual neutron stars eons ago is why we exist, and are here writing and reading comments on a science video. Rather mind-bending stuff!
@@SkyGravity137 yes
@SkyGravity137 @null-0x maybe
Maybe Flerovium swords that deal +500 rad damage but the durability goes down constantly
Well Yes.
There are many advanced civilizations that mine minerals from the core of black holes.
Wakanda fo ey vah
Ah, so trying to take a picture of a kilonova is just like taking a video of my dog doing something funny. By the time I get the camera rolling, the best part is over. 😞
I've played the STAY THEEEEEERE!!!!😠 Game so many times it's not funny! But it's the only way to get a good one every now and then.😼 I chase my cat with the camera, but also all of the wild critters around here. 🥰Too many, and too freaking cute!
absolutely - but don't say you didn't get a few quick vids that you watch from time to time... ;)
Same with little kids. Nearly impossible to capture their cutest moments on camera. With kids - unlike dogs - you can say "do it again" and record, but it almost always looks contrived and faked because it's not genuine.
That's why the best videos are from security cams now. They're always rolling
@@Bob-of-Zoid
9:51 There is a missing step in explanation of how NS merger-ejected neutronium is converted into free neutron flux (or the thick fast moving soup of neutrons) . That is why in space would individual neutrons get unbound from their native neutronium droplets so that being liberated they can participate in r-process to get bound again.
What if instead of intense neutron flux we will speak of neutrons beta-decay happening inside the neutronium droplets. Beta decays would heat the neutronium droplets and charge them up and eventually will cause the droplets to fission into smaller droplets.
While r-process builds heavy nuclei bottom-up by rapid successive neutron captures, I argue that some other process takes place in NS-merger ejecta: top-down process of neutronium droplets beta-decaying and fissioning into heavy nuclei. Thus beta-process and not r-process.
All my axioms just fused 😶🌫
😮
Nuclear matter is weird. Negative adiabatic expansion coefficient!
@@T3sl4 Insulin maybe? 🤪
All that to say you believe that some neutron soup decays into rather than builds up.... Specify, but state your argument.
5:10 Your periodic table has Sodium twice.
Once in it's correct place and once where Potassium should be under the letter K.
Also, Cobalt is Iron, Xenon is Gallium, Zinc is Copper. Once you notice one, the others become more apparent.
Such an elementary mistake :(
Try saying "Once in it is correct place and once where Potassium should be under the letter K."
THANK YOU! I THOUGHT I WAS CRAZY.
Once again, thank you to the entire time for everything you do to make this videos freely available to the public. The topics are fascinating, and Matt's passion for the project is also hugely evident (okay, so I'm a sucker for the dry wit).
I dig the new intro. Very cool. Been subscribed for 7 years or so. Love everything you all do! ❤
5:00 Potassium is labeled as Sodium in the bottom text under the element letter K
There is an Economic problem. It becomes progressively more expensive to make each successive element.
But nerds and Rich guys like weird stuff so they will make them
define 'expensive' please.
Economic understanding (and more so mainstream economic 'knowledge') does a VERY bad job at what is possible and what 'expensive' really means - which is why I ask for UR definition of it.
@@joansparky4439 lol what wierd definition do you even expect?
He simply pointed out the diminishing marginal utility of modern science.
He is not going to write a PhD in economics for some subjective definition.
I can see his point tho, but the state is wasting ressources on so many levels why not on science?
@@Jpz_38t _"He simply pointed out the diminishing marginal utility of modern science."_
No, he pointed at the 'expenses' of undertaking this science without real thought if that 'expense' actually is "real or not".
His 'understanding' of 'expensive' is simply wrong from where I stand on the subject - what I know about it.
That science would not be expensive at all if:
1) he would account properly
2) our economic models were plausible (which they aren't).
The statement is simply incorrect as it is based on wrong assumptions and misunderstandings.
@@joansparky4439 found the redditor.
Crazy how nature do that
should comment this on every video i would like it every time
I agree, if I saw this on every PBS video I'd like it every time as well.
FR FR
The idea of the island of stability and the potentiality reality of it is sooo very cool!
1: If a neutron star was bombarded with enough alpha and/or beta radiation in excess to its exposure to electrons, would the protons survive as part of the neutron star?
2: If "yes" to 1, would a proton-containing neutron star qualify as an atom, or would its inability to be stably orbited by electrons disqualify it?
3: If "yes" to 1, is there a point at which the a proton-containing neutron star would be destabilized by the number of protons?
4: If "yes" to 3, would that star then undergo nuclear decay?
Edit: I'm a chemist whose work has become increasingly focused on admin and procedural documents, so this is all well outside my wheel house, not matter how many videos about these sorts of things I have watched. Thanks for the responses, especially @lukabozic5. It's honestly getting a Ponder Stibbons-style "'That may be the wrong sort of question to ask," kind of response is always the most interesting.
Look into how neutron stars form. Normal stellar matter already contains large amounts of protons, but they are converted into neutrons due to the intense gravitational field and quantum stuff.
Interesting questions. But you have to keep in mind that a neutron star is not only hold together by the strong nuclear force, but also by gravity, which in turn is opposed by the degeneration pressure of the neutrons (because they are fermions). That alone would in my opinion disqualify a neutron star as an atom.
@@mezu-e I may be wrong, but it was my impression that part of that involved be crushed together with electrons. without a source of negative charges, I am unaware of a means of converting protons to neutrons.
@@tremmlor9807 I was keeping that in mind, but you do make an interesting point regarding the whether or not an atom is defined by the structure and composition of its components or by the forces acting on those components.
@@thetux459protons either absoeb an electron, or emit a positron.
The difference is academic in some cases, given how quantum mwchanics works, iirc.
7:00 - Inaccurate table. New orbital is introduced with element 121.
Was just going to comment about this
Beat me to it
Thallium also has an incorrect symbol on the table at 7:08.
Also why are the lanthanides & actinides labelled differently?
I think the Soviets called it moscovium. It was a psy-op against Soviet Russia that produced an element but had pretty much had no usefulness due to its short life.
Science fiction stories occasionally feature some new element that has amazing properties (usually named something like "unobtainium"). But higher elements require protons, and the half-lives of those elements are measured in femtoseconds or less. I would guess that most people believe there can be new elements that exist within the range of ordinary elements, not knowing that it's equivalent to finding a new integer, say between 25 and 26.
Do we know what the absorption bands for these new Elements are? Is it possible that these are already out there but we just don't know what we're looking at?
I'm not sure if there are ways to calculate those reliably since anything beyond light elements would be very hard to calculate even numerically(100+ electrons). But I'm not familiar with that area so I might be very wrong
Thing is, if we'd see lines that do not match known elements, everyone would be on that right away. So my guess is that we don't have any spectroscopic data that is out of line that way
I think you only need to calculate the properties if the outermost layer i depth.
@@sensorer If the element is in low abundance we might mistake those tiny spikes as noise. Could be worth investigating. Then again, multiple observations basically remove noise from the equation.
@@sensorer No this is definitely not something we can calculate. To calculate that we would need an accurate wavefunction of an atomic nucleaus, so far we only have the first element and even that wave function takes like 10 textbook pages to explain. Anything larger gets exponentially more difficult to calculate.
We use models to make predictions but you need real data to verify those predictions. Those models may work for some elements but be completely inaccurate for others, and you won't know if it is accurate for heavier elements even if the model is 99.9999% accurate for lighter elements. Means nothing.
16:13 hey editor, i think you missed a spot
What did he miss?
The period table shown at 7:08, incorrectly lists Thallium (81) as having the same symbol as Titanium (22), Ti, instead of Tl.
And it has two Sodiums. The new one apparently replaces Potassium [K]. How revolutionary, much advanced.
The great thing with neutron stars is that since they're made up of protons too, each one in the observable universe is basically its own unique element, with an atomic number in the 10^50s
So really the periodic table should be a lot longer, though the chemical properties get pretty samey after a while
Well, if you lave aside the nuclei that compose their crust, they're isotopes in the way a mountain of rocks is a brick house.
Neutron star chemical properties are experimental chemists smashed to flat soup on the surface by brutal gravity
I think you mean atomic mass in the 10^50s. Since the vast majority of nucleons are neutrons.
@@castonyoung7514If 0.1% of nucleons are protons (made up figure), then that's still close enough to the 10^50s
We're already past the point where it's meaningful to talk about the table being periodic in the conventional sense. The periodicity of the table originally reflected the similarity of chemical properties shared by elements in the same column. This is attributable to the behavior of chemically relevant electrons, which are the same as you go down a column in the table. To a point... As the elements get heavier, the behavior of their electrons becomes less predictable on those terms.
Yay, new PBS Space Time!
Really some of your best work @PBSSpaceTime! Highly interesting and entertaining!
Thank you. This video helped me sleep
Perfect timing, just as I was looking for the last video before bedtime :)
These are perfect videos to fall asleep to. Either you fall asleep thanks to the complexity and the calm talking, or you learn something new.
Finally another video on this topic 🥰😊 it seems like you are almost only one covering this topic on YT which seems wierd but fascinating at the same time
The stable island probably loses its island in the tsunami of particles in that environment. Its half life is likely to be longer than the time until the next collision or capture.
Yes, but the next collision often creates an element that near immediately decays into the island again, I’m guessing
@@terdragontra8900It may fission into something completely else. Or beta decay into someone unstable that fissions or beta decay again.
But this is a very good observation @kelimike
Try saying "It is half life is likely to be longer than the time until the next collision or capture."
@@nghiado9895 Well said, and thank you. I've been scolded for lazy writing. I prefer your method of help. That first bit was weird to read without the apostrophe.
This was so fascinating!! Thanks for partnering with us, you're the best!! 💙🎧
Transuranics sound like a pretty rad metal band
A transuranic element is a heavy metal...
Now I'm really wondering what are the details of the way we calculate fission decay chains. This would make an awesome episode of Space Time
Is it just me... or is the periodic table incorrect in this video? The symbols are correct, but Na & K are both labelled as sodium... 5:24
It’s a conspiracy!!!! (Or a poor graphical designer had a busy day)
Titanium and thallium are both labeled as Ti. Someone probably had a long day
I enjoy these videos very much
Minor need for clarification at 15:48 . Beta decays (and most other decays) leave the new element in an Excited state. The excited state provides enough energy for the isotope to decay, without that energy the isotope would be stable and with a much longer half-life.
Earlier this year I attended a colloquium where a theoretical physicist was presenting an interesting method of probing the nucleus and studying why the nucleus is stable. I was elated when he brought up neutron stars! Incredible that we can use massive celestial objects to better understand minuscule objects like the nucleus.
Perfect shirt for the video
I always thought some kind of high momentum/neutron star collision would produce so more more energy for heavier elements, this is one of my favorites so far on PBS Space Time
timming with my pizza is perfect
Now that’s one good t-shirt I need
This one strange, cosmic phenomenon has been populating the peoples periodic tables like wildfire
Beautiful episode as always.
I love the shirt haha!
PBS is a valuable gem on Us television. May it be preserved for the public.
ROUS...
* Rodents Of Unusual Size
* eleRments Of Unusual Stability
The island of stability is somewhere in the fire swamp!
“eleRments”?
Radioactive Objects of Unusual Stability?
I don't think they exist
Good video, PBS.
6:50 Thalium, number 81, has the wrong symbol, Ti is Titanium, Thalium should be Tl.
Potassium is wrong too...
They don’t read or address comments anymore. Give it up.
Great job explaining this. This is one of your easiest to understand videos.
5:18 there are some weird copy paste errors in that periodic table? cobalt is iron potassium is sodium
Superb video, as always! And love this episode's shirt!
Neutron Statlrs could come up with some exotic elements.
The secret of joy in work is contained in one word excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
One day, our civilzation will discover Unobtainium.
We will never be able to obtain it though, unfortunately 😢
Once we do, we will be opening Pandora's box.
"I know writers who use subtext, and they're all cowards" -James Cameron (probably)
Unobtainium always struck me as a temporary name for an element. So if Unobtainium was ever found and then named something else you'd never be able to get Unobtainium.
o7 CMDR
Stable Transuranics are the dream
I always watch PBS Space Time at my coffee break and I'm not sure to this day what wakes me up more of the two
Ok, I have a general question. We know that p+ and n exist because we see them outside of nuclei. But within nuclei, it seems to me, as a crank layman, that the existence of *separate* nucleons has to be something of a simplified model of the ongoing QCD interactions, right? What we really have in a nucleus ought to be something like a quark-gluon plasma - whatever structure exists in there seems like it would be more like waves on the ocean or in air: a very temporary structure that is an emergent property of a completely different process.
And yes, of course, if we look through the lens of QFT, I suppose that seems less odd. Still I would like to hear more about this at some point. It seems relevant to the questions surrounding, trans-uranics, but also more generally to how nuclear physics *actually* works (including the weirdness of the weak force).
Neutrons and protons consist of triples of quarks, fundamental particles bound by tunnels in the gluon field, so they are in more sense than not individual particles.
Although sometimes the quarks in a nucleon attract quarks in another nearby nucleon, resulting in the strong nuclear force.
BTW the strong nuclear force is a quasiforce caused by the strong force.
I have thought of new subatomic particles in particle accelerators, but not newly discovered atoms. This was suprisingly interesting.
You may also be interested in the recent detection of antihelium in space.
@@garethdean6382woah, and on the space station too!
Bobby Broccoli had an amazing video on this
All seasons are beautiful for the person who carries happiness within.
I need an island of stability in my life.
Don't we all?
Fascinating!
Have predictions of the spectra of super heavy elements been hypothesized? That would determine the products of observed supernova, I suggest.
No, they're quite complex, to the point that we're not even sure of the spectra of elements like Californium. We MAY have detected them in Przybylski's star, but cannot be sure.
12:55 technically, though the elements may have "decayed long ago", instruments, such as JWST, may not have decayed yet...from our perspective -- despite them having "actually decayed" long ago. That's why the JWST is sometimes referred to as a "time machine".
Using infrared to determine elements may be difficult, though I'm not sure if it's technically impossible, unlike spectroscopic techniques from optical telescopes.
The definition of Coulomb Force on screen at 3:12 is sloppy. It uses "respectively" incorrectly (the order is reversed) and seems to just give up at the end talking only about opposite charges. Other than that, great video.
Thank you. I have learned so much from Space Time.
2:16: “they ensure they don’t get so close together that the repulsive tendencies overwhelm the strong attractive force?” Sounds like I needed some of those in my last marriage!! Heyyoooooooooooo
nice! it's good to do things just for you... well done!
Could we someday use femtotechnology to create new exotic forms of matter that don't involve atoms?
how would you have matter without atoms?
@@RoZaxTheGreat Are atoms the only thing that can create a solid surface?
@@RoZaxTheGreatif muons didn’t decay quickly, maybe a mixture of anti-muons and electrons? I guess that wouldn’t have a very complex structure, as I guess it would largely resemble hydrogen? I don’t think muons stick to other muons, so you wouldn’t get heavier nuclei..
For it to count as “matter”, I think it needs to have Fermions?
So, would need to have either quarks, leptons (electrons, muons, tauons), or neutrinos?
(Well, of the fundamental particles currently known…)
I guess neutrons by themselves aren’t stable, so maybe considering only hadrons that are approximately stable by themselves is too restrictive?
Could some of the other hadrons be stable enough if bound to some other hadrons? I don’t know.
If so, maybe such a nucleus, with electrons in orbit around it, could be considered “not an atom”?
Hmm.. could some other arrangement of protons and neutrons be stable other than “a nucleus”? Like… a nucleus can be excited, with there being internal motion within the nucleus… maybe if you had multiple excited nuclei, there could be some interaction between them that keep them from going to individually lower energy states?? Idk
There are exotic atoms formed by an electron and a positron orbiting each other, as well as a proton and an anti-proton orbiting each other. They have chemical properties vaguely similar to hydrogen, but both decay very rapidly (the proton variety more so) as both members emmit energy while they move so they spiral in until both annihilate each other. Probably throwing in some pions or some weird combination of quarks and anti quarks could stabilize the thing, then you'd have a form of "matter" with very different properties to regular one
The main reason you don't fall through the floor is because your body's electrons repel the floor's electrons. All known interactable matter is some combinations of protons, neutrons, and electrons.
Always great to see a video from PBS Space Time
I know i am going to sound like some spoiled modern age conformist, but that loud noise at the end of the video (starting at 17:26)really disrupted my attempts at falling asleep while listening to the rest of the video. Any chance it could be done away with or just reduced in volume? 😅
What a spoiled modern age conformist (I have never heard this term in my life) for… not being able to sleep with loud sounds? Liking science?
This interests me a lot.. I idea of new elements, is very intriguing
Underrated tee shirt!
It's so interesting to see the periodic table grow over time.
What keeps a nucleus from getting a lot of neutrons (Hydrogen 8 for example)?
Neutrons are unstable, unless they interact with protons through the strong nuclear force.
And with how short ranged it is, you run into a packing problem.
I will make a gross simplification here. Weak decay. Neutrons decay outside of the nucleus in about 15 minutes and the only reason they are stable in the nucleus is because the sum of energies between proton and neutron is less than the individual energies of two particles. You add too many neutrons to a single proton, you violate that law and it becomes more energy favorable for a neutron to decay to a proton via beta decay or if it's above the neutron drip line via neutron emission. Your hydrogen-8 is above the theoretical limit of neutrons (above the neutron drip line) so the neutron emission should occur
Neutron decay. They'll turn into protons eventually through the weak force.
Sphere packing and quantum chromodynamics. Hydrogen 8 with minimal atomic mass change would probably end up being Lithium-7 quite quickly. So for the sphere packing part of the example we just need to count up for the configuration of balls. 1 ball is just 1 ball. 2 balls, form a line. 3 Balls form a triangle (and would much rather be a line and a single ball). 4 balls form a triangular pyramid, also known as a tetrahedron (very stable). 5 balls create a triangular bipyramid. 6 balls create an octohedron-like shape, or just 2 triangles of balls pushed together with an offset of 60 degrees (by shape: square of balls, a ball above and below the square in the middle). 7 is with a pillar ball ontop. The pillar ball is always the a proton to isolate the charge as much as possible. Each of the triangles therefore has a single proton in them. The idea is to create balanced shapes and even distrobutions of protons within the shape. "Add neutrons as necessary" to help with the balancing... when you can. Also remember, protons do not undergo spontaneous decay on their own so that if a proton ever leaves, it means it's just no longer bound by the original group and has now become a free proton, or a hydrogen ion. (there is a plausible way to decay a proton on its own, we don't talk about it).
@@VagueHandWaving For his Hydrogen example you are correct but in general this is incorrect. For higher Z you need isospin symmetry broken as the Coulomb force grows, you need way more N to interact via strong force to counteract the Coulomb force
This idea is so elegant! A cool perspective would be the transition from quantum mechanics scale to cosmology and hence qravity and GR
Anyone notice his Periodic table of Minecraft t shirt!
This is fascinating
0:31 Nerd Hippies!? I thought I was the only one.
Nah, we out there
This channel is back on form again, even the sponsor seemed useful!
Tiz nice.
"Thank you to Raycon for supporting PBS...."
We truly live in the darkest timeline. If the Public Broadcasting Station needs to take money from sketchy companies that slap their logo on cheapo no-actual-brand earbuds (that's what Raycons are), then something is *seriously wrong*.
See also DankPods's videos on why the RanCans are rather poorly received. The RoyJoys aren't super bad sound quality wise, jsut bad value for money
When you have to deal with money, revenue or loss, things tend to get complicated real quick. I'm not saying I'm happy about it, but - sigh - it seems to be how things are, and have been for a long time.
That's why I have the expensive Sony ones, that test out as the best on the market (At least they did when I bought them)
@@tabularasa0606 you dont need 1500 usd sony earbuds, 20$ moondrops sounds just fine and for 100$ you can get very good audio quality if you buy wired IEMs.
welcome to capitalism.
The answer is yes, the more interesting question is wether they could be made stable
I declare Element 168 to be a Noble Gas, the *LAST ELEMENT*
Then the fire element attacked
I think that one of those elements can contain the power that others cannot, and that is to initiate a black hole, which means that whenever we figure out how to make those elements, we will finally observe the particles that interact with gravity itself.
particles dont initiate a blackhole, mass does. If you have enough mass close together, then light cannot go through it anymore. Thats all a blackhole is. In theory every particle is a blackhole if you can somehow compress it down small enough
I pretend that I'm taking random elements that aren't on the periodic table every time I take my Flintstone vitamin everyday.
Me: *Opens Flintstones bottle* Oh yes.. my daily dose of Extremium, catium, cyclonium and pandemonium supplements.
I'm 39.
Your shirt is awesome. I think I need to buy one now.
There's an error on your periodic table in this video: it says "sodium" instead of "potassium".
That's some heavy sodium. 😅
The graphics guy saw it and just said, "K, I made a mistake. Can I be bothered to fix it? Na."
incredibly insightful and humble words :) i hope that the next killa nova doesn't get away from our scientists!
I hate the "new element" sci fi trope because we have a literally infinite space of possible chemical compounds, and beyond that we also have infinite ways of arranging different compounds into materials and meta-materials with amazing properties, and sci fi always goes for the implausible "new elements!" that would either half a half life of 1 femtosecond, or if they exist, they'll just be extremely heavy metallic nothings.
i love your shirts, every time
Californiums' radiation has been known to cause humans within the vicinity to decay into a pile of needles, human skat, crack tents, and broken dreams.
Strange, you mention the Island of Stability existing around atomic numbers 110-to-114 ( as stated at 7:52 ) but I had incorrectly thought the theoretical island referred to much more stable elements at much, much higher atomic numbers, well above 130. The diagram at 11:00 shows a green area representing some short-lived stability around 123-to-128 protons, beyond which were the (so I incorrectly thought) hypothesized super-stable heavier elements. I want spaceships built with atoms heavier than 140 protons each!
Is there any way to predict the actual physical properties that, say, the hypothetical super-stable Element 180 would manifest? Like, what would a gram of it look like, or feel like in your hand?
I think you can predict for something like 120, but I don't think for 180.
Chemical properties are determined by the outermost electron shell.
IDK but most of the elements past the periodic table would likely feel like a nuke going off in your hand
You would need to know first about nuclear physics, whether it's stable or not. For that you need a robust theory where as inputs you would have 2 inputs (number of protons and number of neutrons) and it would give you the properties of the nucleus. Such robust theory doesn't exist, it's a dream of low energy nuclear physics to have such an equation or set of equations. Nobel worthy dream.
Now that we are done with the nuclear physics part you need an atomic physicist to look what kind of electron shells would be formed, look at the behaviour of electrons in the outer shells, especially considering, using your example, 180 protons would imply large electron orbitals and consequently heavy relativistic effects. Much easier job to do than the nuclear physicist mentioned above but still hard
To some extent. For example, the element below mercury should be a liquid. Melting points, boiling points and appearance are reasonably easy to guess, as well a some chemistry. Of course their intense radioactivity changes everything.
Nice shirt, Matt!
if you guys haven't already figured out that we are akin to the electrons and the planets and galaxies gravity is just a scaled up version of the WNF/SNF, and galactic clusters are akin to cells, and we just live somewhere on an infinite scale, then you aren't doing "theoretical science" quite right yet.
Well, that's interesting. But I will give one comparison here - you decide for yourself if it is appropriate. If you seriously want to stop a fight between two people, how many people do you need? Ideally just one, if they both use their senses and haven't completely lost control of themselves. That is if reason is present! But when there is no reason, this number is much higher. For such persons, who no longer have the presence of reason, being squeezed into a closed room means that they have to be immobilized, arms, legs, and body. In such a situation, 5 persons of the same constitution would control one of the two persons. So if we transfer this knowledge and understanding to heavier atomic elements, we find that these are now groups of people that we have to immobilize in a given space so that the situation calms down and stabilizes. And here we have an external influence that comes into context. What happens to a group of people who are trying to calm down the people in their group and another such group of so-called brawlers and their pacifiers comes up against them? As the battle of instinct against reason has now arisen here, the men of reason will withdraw, and the struggle will rage between the two sides of instinct, until the men without reason are reduced to a number that the men of reason can control. This would be a comparison of humans with atomic bodies, of course I did not forget about electrons! Electrons are information bodies that influence the mental state of people in groups and their awareness of the surroundings in which they are located. We also have other forces that influence the group, but you can explain this yourself as you wish.
We talk about Physics creating Gravitational quantum vortexes in a jar with super critical helium. Can this be used for travel