Transuranic Elements found in nature
- Thread starter Agentdark
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IIRC Plutonium does occur naturally, though in minute amounts.
I don't know about the others (aren't they mostly pretty unstable and unlikely to reach anywhere outside the high-energy environments that create them?), but Plutonium is pretty harmful, easily absorbed into the body and very slow to exit again. Any system that naturally developed larger accumulations of the stuff would be creating 'kill zones' where our kind of mammals, birds and fish would have a hard time surviving. If the material is common enough, that could have evolutionary effects favouring other metabolisms or greater radiation tolerance.
I don't know about the others (aren't they mostly pretty unstable and unlikely to reach anywhere outside the high-energy environments that create them?), but Plutonium is pretty harmful, easily absorbed into the body and very slow to exit again. Any system that naturally developed larger accumulations of the stuff would be creating 'kill zones' where our kind of mammals, birds and fish would have a hard time surviving. If the material is common enough, that could have evolutionary effects favouring other metabolisms or greater radiation tolerance.
As Carlton already pointed out; the atoms of most transuranic elements are very unstable and have a very short half-life.
IIRC even the most stable transuranic elements have a half-life of only about a millenium or so, so pretty much all amounts of transuranic elements that were present on or in the Earth when this planet was formed, are now simply no longer there due to radioactive decay.
In other words: in order to make sure that various transuranic elements are found naturally on Earth, you'll have to make sure that the atoms of these elements become more stable .
And to do that, you'll basically have to change the laws of physics...
IIRC even the most stable transuranic elements have a half-life of only about a millenium or so, so pretty much all amounts of transuranic elements that were present on or in the Earth when this planet was formed, are now simply no longer there due to radioactive decay.
In other words: in order to make sure that various transuranic elements are found naturally on Earth, you'll have to make sure that the atoms of these elements become more stable .
And to do that, you'll basically have to change the laws of physics...
Stable (non-radioactive) transuranic elements are predicted. They'd be useful in for architecture, studying gravity, etc.
Any post-uranic elements found in nature would be in the so-called 'island of stability' In the atomic number range from 110 - 114 and 126 upwards. If these existed, they would have unusual chemical properties, and if they are found they could have interesting effects on the history of chemistry and history in general...
About the elements in the island of stability; do keep in mind that, if any of these elements have a half-life of thirty seconds or so, they'd still be unusually stable compared to other transuranic elements.
There is still no evidence that any element in the island of stability would be stable enough to be used in anything other than nuclear research, etc.
There is still no evidence that any element in the island of stability would be stable enough to be used in anything other than nuclear research, etc.
Thande
Donor
The most likely possibility for a genuinely stable transuranic element would be ununquadium, but as I understand it, there aren't any easy nuclear synthesis pathways to it.
Not exactly true:
Np237 halflife=2E6years
Pu244 - 7.6E7 years
Cm247 - 1.6E7 years
Bk247 - 1400 years
Cf251 - 800 years
now after that it drops fast
Es252 - 180 days
Fm257 - 80 days
Md257 - 3 hours
However, until a stable isotope is made, there is little way of knowing how stable it would be.
Susano
Banned
"We dont know how stable it is, therefore stability"?
Besides, what is with that topic? For some time now it ppops up every month or so...
Mind explaining this to us non-science people? I suspect it has something to do with the stability of superheavy elements, but I'm not sure.
"were to be found in nature...". This seems to imply that they would be very VERY stable.
So, probably the laws of physics would need to change to expand the 'island of stability' or whatever, but that seems okay in this sort of an Alternate History. So, granted that we are changing the laws of physics to begin with, the question is "what happens then?"
Well, probably the most stable of these stable elemtents would Ununoctium (118) because it would be a 'noble gas', except that it would be so heavy that, following the existing trend, it would probably be a liquid at least. Such a liquid would prove a fine contaminant. Also, some creative scientists, again following the trend, probably could make it bond to many other elements, creating compounds that have no use but fun names.
Ununseptium (117), Ununenium (119), and Unbinilium (120), being Halogen, Alkali, and Alkaline Earth, would be extremely reactive and due to their weights probably could not be separated in large amounts.
The interesting questions come with the later 120's, because then there would have to be a fabled 'g-orbital' (after s, p, d, and f), in which case there would be complex ions galore!...in which case these elements would be found all over combined with Oxygen, Hydrogen, Fluorine, and other nicely reactive elements. In such 'bound' states they would have little effect, but would be trace contaminants of other stuff.
The most obvious effect I see is increased radioactivity and increased cancer in higher life forms.
The only way to accomplish this is to increase the strong magnetic force. It's the fundamental force that makes protons stick to eachother inside the nucleus regardless of the electromagnetic force. It is one hundred times stronger than electromagnetism (it is the strongest of the four) but its range is 10^-15, where electromagnetism is infinite.
If you increase it then the EM forces will be hindered even if there are so many protons and neutrons in the nucleus, so common sense would lend itself to the increase of stable elements. Radium would be stable in this universe.
But there are other side effects, the best one I can think of (it's 2:45 AM and I'm talking about particle physics, shut up) is the life of stars. Small stars, like our sun, slowly make layers of elements, up to iron. Iron is the first element that when fused results in less energy than started with, so the star promptly collapses due to it's own weight (normally the pressure of fusion keeps the size in check). After collapsing it puffs out in a gigantic nebula. Heavier elements formed either at the moment of collapse, as momentum forces atoms together, or in supernova, which can make things as heavy as uranium and plutonium.
When more force is required to break apart the atom, less energy is created, so the limit is somewhere around... neon, it's basically up to you. But either way the life of a star is signifigantly shortened. And heavier elements are harder to create, so you end up with a Catch-22, more elements are stable, but they are rare. I mean copper would be like gold.
It's like one of those paper geometric models, one you fold them together they are very hard to break, but assembling them is almost impossible...
If you increase it then the EM forces will be hindered even if there are so many protons and neutrons in the nucleus, so common sense would lend itself to the increase of stable elements. Radium would be stable in this universe.
But there are other side effects, the best one I can think of (it's 2:45 AM and I'm talking about particle physics, shut up) is the life of stars. Small stars, like our sun, slowly make layers of elements, up to iron. Iron is the first element that when fused results in less energy than started with, so the star promptly collapses due to it's own weight (normally the pressure of fusion keeps the size in check). After collapsing it puffs out in a gigantic nebula. Heavier elements formed either at the moment of collapse, as momentum forces atoms together, or in supernova, which can make things as heavy as uranium and plutonium.
When more force is required to break apart the atom, less energy is created, so the limit is somewhere around... neon, it's basically up to you. But either way the life of a star is signifigantly shortened. And heavier elements are harder to create, so you end up with a Catch-22, more elements are stable, but they are rare. I mean copper would be like gold.
It's like one of those paper geometric models, one you fold them together they are very hard to break, but assembling them is almost impossible...
I looked at that, particular image, as I was researching my original post. It does seem that ununquadrium would be rather stable.
Neptunium and plutonium do indeed occur in nature, albeit fleetingly (we're talking time measured with clocks, not calendars). Americium and similar transuranic actinides are every bit as unstable, if not more so; thus...forget it.
Now, there have been predictions of a so-called "island of stability" for some very heavy nuclei once out of the actinide series (I recall they'd occur in the far right columns of the periodic table; i.e., the column containing oxygen; the halogens; the rare gases). So far, it's still a theory, since particle accelerator experiments haven't produced nuclei in the predicted range. It would still beg the question of occurrence in nature, though, unless such were discovered in vanishingly small amounts (say, in gas trapped in porous rocks from deep within mines).
lots of physics threads recently...
just a few corrections, all forces could be viewed as infinite, they just lose effect at different ranges (ie to electromagnetism gravity would seem infinite)
there are noble gas elements that are radioactive, (eg Radon, which you could kinda guess really)
i am not one for changing the laws of physics on a whim, so the best bet would be this island of stability thingy (guess you really do learn something new every day) although seeing as everything is relative, my guess would be that elements in that region would only be relatively stable (something with a half-life of a second looks incredable stable to one that would have a half-life of a nano-second)
the magic numbers thing sounds the most promising, except bear in mind that arificially raising neutron numbers to make a magic number of nucleons wouldn't make something unstable more stable (although do correct me if i'm wrong)
just a few corrections, all forces could be viewed as infinite, they just lose effect at different ranges (ie to electromagnetism gravity would seem infinite)
there are noble gas elements that are radioactive, (eg Radon, which you could kinda guess really)
i am not one for changing the laws of physics on a whim, so the best bet would be this island of stability thingy (guess you really do learn something new every day) although seeing as everything is relative, my guess would be that elements in that region would only be relatively stable (something with a half-life of a second looks incredable stable to one that would have a half-life of a nano-second)
the magic numbers thing sounds the most promising, except bear in mind that arificially raising neutron numbers to make a magic number of nucleons wouldn't make something unstable more stable (although do correct me if i'm wrong)