Thread: Superheavy Elements

My mind once again, full of questions.

As many know, the heaviest stable stable isotope is Lead-208 (Bismuth technically has no stable isotopes.) all isotopes after this have no stable isotopes.

I was wondering that, eventually maybe one of these Superheavy Elements would be stable, or if the is a way to make them stable, so they could be used for real applications.

Well, it would have to be like holding a ball in the air, where if you let go the ball falls to the ground, that is, if you don't hold the bismuth isotope together it will fall apart.

With the general logic down, in order to keep the Bismuth Isotope from disassociating, one first needs to find a way to "hold" it together.

Next, we must assume that to hold an object you must control it in some fashion by means of interacting with it...what interacts with a bismuth isotope...other atoms maybe?

I, for one, would say some sort of gravitational pressure exerted on the outer limits of the particle by means of another atom or large amounts of various sub atomic particles. One can only speculate. As far as I know, no one has found a way.

Very Intresting, while I was not talking about Bismuth in General, it seems like the place to start, since Bismuth-209's Half-Life is 19,000,000,000,000,000,000 Years. If you could stop Bismuth from Decaying, you could possibly work your way up to much more unstable isotopes like Ununbium-285, which has a half-life of 29 seconds.

There are theoretical speculations that postulate an island of stability at very high proton numbers of nuclei.

well, this is interesting.

What do you think Black Holes are made of?

That question kept me thinking for a looong time, cause i never believed a Black Hole is just a 'singularity' (whatever that word really means i dont even know) or a freak thing or point in space with 'nothing'.

i think its just like a planet, a ball of matter.

And that matter must be some kind of Super Heavy element, it makes perfect sense, cause black holes have massive gravity, but still, they can be quite small compared to same masses of 'normal' matter.

So it has to be a very heavy, dense element, probably in a very pure or simply 100% pure state, cause nothing else can exits next to it. Gravity probably crushes all other elements/matter getting to close so hard, it may just change it in the exact same matter witch started it.

But as with all matter there will be a breaking point where this ball of blackhole matter will stop growing cause of the core failing under the immense pressure from all the matter building up around the core. This could even be the way to make another, even denser and heavier element, witch must be UNstable. This will cause an implosion followed by an explosion of energy when this unstable matter falls apart in lighter elements, and thats probably what the big bang was, and will always be.

So i believe there must be at least one stable super heavy element, but then again, we'll probably never have a chance to grab it, see it or even examine it.

No, the pressure is much too high to sustain any atomic structure. Even in comparably loose structures like neutron stars, almost all material is compressed so strongly that it is turned into neutrons. The electrons are pressed into the nuclei and combine with protons. At that stage, only the nuclear forces balance out the gravitational forces. Even denser objects (black holes) overcome this force so that gravity surpasses all other known forces. So, nothing is left that could balance out gravity leading to infinite collapse. However, there is a regime that we cannot say anything about: quantum gravity. To date, there is no solid theory. I think, here lies the only hope finding new forces that can prevent eternal collapse.

i do think its possible that there is a way to fix all those atomic structural problems, just because our technology doen't have the anwsers yet doesn't mean its not possibe.

Human knowledge today isn't that spectacluair in my opinion, but it is very arrogant to think we could even understand all of those structures.

The same problem lies in the search for life in other space, everybody always says you need water to form life. But just because we need water, doesn't mean all life should need water, its nonsense.

And still, we use models to explain things like atoms and chemistry, but these models are nothing more than a model, and its doesn't always represent reality as it really is.

Think about time, it is used a lot in sience, but i dont believe that time is even a factor in anything, it's a factor in a model we use to explain thing happening around us, but it is somthing we can't manipulate simply because its not there.

There are so much forms of energy and particles we haven't even discovered, so you have no way of defending your awnser about structures in a blackhole. But you said it as well, there is no solid theory.

it is theoretically possible, super heavy elements fall apart because the intermolecular forces are not strong enough to bind them together, think of custard, if you have a small lump of it and constantly move it simulating the motion of atoms and the pull of the electrons whizzing around it, you can keep it mostly solid, it won't melt and drip out of your hands, however once a certain mass is reached you can move that ball of custard as much as you want it is still going to melt through your fingers, it's mass has become too great for the forces (your fingers) to hold it together, same thing happens with superheavy elements



theoretically either heating up or cooling down these elements could cause the element to stabalize, but the temperatures required are millenia ahead of us, you would have to lower the temperature below absolute zero to essentially stop the element from falling apart (like cupping your hands around water to hold it together as a little puddle) or heat it to something hotter than a star to give it enough power to hold itself together (like more hands hitting custard so it stays together :? )


above Itso mentioned black holes being a super heavy element (actually black holes are far more likely just a lump of matter without definition, no protons no neutrons just matter) but it's a good example, a black hole exerts tremendous pressure, pressure creates heat (if you stretch a rubber band lots it gets warm, same thing happens in reverse) so black holes probably have the potential to create stable superheavy elements shortly before crushing them out of existance, this matter could possibly be ejected from the black hole in a quasar where it would temporarily be a stable superheavy element, but since the pressure is removed it would quickly break down into lesser elements


so yeah superheavy stable elements are probably possible, and eventually we will probably engineer something like it and understand it more but not in our lifetimes I think

There's nothing below absolute zero, and, by definition, nothing at absolute zero will fall apart, since there's no movement at absolute zero. (But also, by definition, absolute zero is unreachable.)

An interesting thing to note though is that certain types of stars (neutron stars? I forget exactly) are basically composed of one giant atomic nucleus.

absolute zero is interresting, i thought once it could be a way to freeze time, but i dont believe in time, and what would happen just before you reach absolute zero, could everything just fall apart just before you reach that piont, or even worse, dissapear totally?

i believe if you could drain all energy from the universe (witch is what absolute zero is), nothing would be left, coz everything is energy, in one form or the other, even mass and matter are forms of energy storage, and it might just all be gone at absolute zero.

if there is nothing left, its pretty obvious there will be no movement.

Can atoms exist without movement? i dont think so, i think the movement keeps it balanced and stable, without it it wil fial and get unstable and give back its energy to the system.

but there is no way of making energy just dissapear, you can only change it or relocate it, so absolute zero is quite impossible, and time is fiction, and not a reality or xtra dimension.