New Element Makes Periodic Table

What I'd like to know is how is this useful? Spending billions of dollars to create a substance that you can't use doesn't seem wise to me. Sure, the things learned in the process can have some merit, but in my opinion, not nearly enough.

I think this might be the path to the stars. Maybe if you can accelerate a particle to light speed, it becomes infinitely heavy. one particle like that ejected from your spacecraft could provide significant thrust... who knows. Here is a link to similar thrusters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster

I am slightly annoyed at some of these additions to the periodic table that can only be viewed for a short period of time. Since they decay so fast, what is the point of even acknowledging their existence unless a good use comes from it? Some may study this new element, but most will go on to try and create the next super-heavy element. Perhaps there should be an additional criteria for new elements?

Hi Jaxy,

Since they decay so fast, what is the point of even acknowledging their existence unless a good use comes from it?

I agree completely.

Mike

So 112 is the heaviest element!?

Wrong: Last December a heavier element was created. It was not lead that was bombarded for three weeks but silicon.

My wife took my credit card last Christmas and it was swiped through a little credit card machine, non-stop for three weeks. Believe me, currently that is the heaviest element known to me…

Clearly it should be called ephemeralium.

A small number correction. 5E18 is 5 billion billion. You need to repeat the billion to get the exponent 18.

Good catch!

I wonder how long it took the grad students to count and transfer all those tiny buggers into the beakers? :)

Ah, very good catch. 5 billion billion is what I meant - as per my source, but Microsoft Word must've thought I repeated myself accidently. Thanks for finding this!

Mikerho and Jaxy, the point is that it is expected that there is an "island of stability" where some of these superheavy synthetic elements yet to be discovered are stable. In fact there might just be isotopes of element 112 that are more stable than the one that was discovered. And just because these elements are not naturally occurring here on earth, that is not to say that they might not be naturally occurring in the cores of supermassive stars and such, if possibly only for short periods of time.

My qualms do not lie within a synthetic versus naturally occurring debate. My problem is that the research to figure out it exists may be for nothing if more research isn't done to find a useful facet for this discovery. I am afraid that the research will desire quantity over quality. In another words, I believe that research is sometimes more interested in the sheer number of new discoveries than in the deeper exploration into one single discovery. I just wish that more research was done on this element so we could know more about it, other than it exists.