Island of stability? Nothing is stable!......Yet...Maybe ever?

This area is for discussions involving any fusion related radiation metrology issues. Neutrons are the key signature of fusion, but other radiations are of interest to the amateur fusioneer as well.
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Richard Hull
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Island of stability? Nothing is stable!......Yet...Maybe ever?

Post by Richard Hull »

As this is a radiation forum, I am moving the recent limited discussion in the references forum to this one for discussion if it warrants it by those interested in the subject.

viewtopic.php?t=14810

It has long been a theoretical discussion based on the magic numbers and some theory of nuclear internal models that there is an Island of stability among the super heavy elements. The general theory says this will be in and around element 114. Elements actually found below , within and above this island are all 100% radioactive with half lives in fractions of a second. What gives?

A full understanding comes to all here who really know and understand radioactivity and stability within the periodic table. Radioactivity and stability has nothing to do with atomic number, but atomic weight! As such, stability is a neutron thing!! Nothing inhibits or fosters stability in any element as much as the number of neutrons in the nucleus. (This assumes neutrons have a genuine physical, unique particular existence within the nucleus). This is a discussion in and of itself and I will not take this further here.

Given the existence of neutrons in the nucleus, my statement regarding the role of the neutron number making an atom either stable or radioactive has to hold. Now, why are we not producing stable elements in the super heavies "island of stability"?

My feeling is we can't or haven't got the neutron numbers correct. The video in the URL above alludes to this, noting that the creation of these elements is a nano-barn cross sectional crap shoot based on the two element shooting range 16,000 yard target effort! Can we hope to "dial a neutron number" into this crap shoot to land in the island of stability?

Examine this hypothesis.....The very search for the super heavies absolutely relies on alpha decay chains! Truly stable elements or even metastable nuclides rely on Chemical or electromagnetic separation to show a fixed stable element. For metastables a longish half life is an easy find, as well. Thus, we are in a hunt for higher atomic numbers that we pray are alpha emitters and naturally unstable. What a self defeating hunt for the island of stability! How do you detect a production of 5 atoms of a 10e15 year half-life virtually stable element 114? The same would be true for a vastly less stable 1000 year half-life 5 atoms of element 114. What about 5 atoms of a 59 year half-life 114?

How do we know that we have not already made some stable 114? Even using mass separation, how many masses are possible with 114? If we counted 5 atoms, did they all decay? Is that really possible?

I would point out the fact that many nuclides of the virtually stable rare earth elements are radioactive with half lives of 10e10-10e18 years! (check your chart of the nuclides table) Many of the rare earths have no infinitely stable nuclide!!! Heck, Bismuth which is 100% element 109 is recently found to be unstable with a half life of 10e21-10e23 years which decays to thallium!!! This is on the order of 10 billion times longer than the current age of the entire universe and you will still have half your bismuth 109 left!!

How will we detect island of stability elements without total control of resultant neutron numbers and detection methods aimed at ostensibly long half-live, virtually stable elements within this area of stability?

An aside:

The above hunt for heavy elements is obvious in that given enough blasting away with heavy elements, we can certainly strain like a gear box and get any number of desired protons to find a momentary number of neutrons to bind together and nearly instantly decay! Stupid and obvious!

A similarity is to be found in the utter amazement at our just recently claiming we have done ignition fusion on earth! You mean there was some doubt we could do it?! Yet blow all the treasure on fusion for 70 years on what might be impossible after all?!!! Stupid and obvious!

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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