Each element has a distinctive atomic number. The atomic number is the number of protons in the nucleus. Isotopes have the same number of protons, meaning they are the same element, but a different number of neutrons. Carbon, for example, has three isotopes: carbon-12, carbon-13, and carbon-14. Each of these has six protons, but they have six, seven, and eight neutrons, respectively. As far as isotopes go, it's pretty boring, and there are some that have remarkable characteristics.
10. Tellurium-128 has an incredibly long half-life.
Tellurium is number 52 on the periodic table and is a silvery metalloid element. It is also slightly toxic, so try not to play with it. It has 8 isotopes, and one of them, tellurium-128, has actually earned itself a Guinness World Record due to the fact that it has a staggeringly long half-life.
The number was calculated as 2.2 x (10 to the power of 24) years. This is an obscure number for most of us, so you can express it in another way. This is 160 trillion times longer than the age of the universe itself. The universe is nearly 14 billion years old, so tellurium-128's half-life is about as close to eternity as anything you're likely to find in nature.
9. Astatine isotopes decay in the blink of an eye
At the opposite end of the spectrum from tellurium, astatine does not have a long half-life at all. At 85th place on the periodic table, it is also the rare element on Earth: There are only about 25 grams on the planet at any given time. Why so rare? It's those half-lives again.
The longest-lived isotope of astatine is astatine-210 with a half-life of 8.1 hours. There are 32 isotopes in total, none of which are stable. The shortest-lived is astatine-213, with a half-life of 125 nanoseconds It has also been said that astatine's radioactivity is so strong that it actually destroys itself.
All isotopes are radioactive and can be formed from bismuth in the laboratory. They are sometimes used as radioactive tracers, but other than that, they have little use in the scientific world.
8. Gold has 41 isotopes, but only one of them is stable.
Gold is a very well-known element, and most of us would be happy to come across it in the wild. It is very valuable and does not corrode like many other metals. What is less well known is that there are actually 41 known isotopes of the metal. The one we know and covet is gold-197, and it is the only stable isotope, which is found in gold. The remaining 40 are radioactive.
Interestingly, gold-197 observationally stable . This means that science says it should be radioactive, but observing it doesn't live up to that promise. So even if you expect it to be radioactive, it's not. Overall, this has been a good thing for almost every economy in history.
7. Germanium-72 undergoes an unusual phase transition
Germanium is the 32nd element on the periodic table and another metalloid that straddles the line between metal and non-metal. It has five stable isotopes, and germanium-76 is the longest-lived of them all, with a half-life of about 130 billion times the age of the universe. It’s not the most interesting of the isotopes, though. As for germanium, it’s isotope 72 that exhibits a very unusual behavior when it starts to heat up.
We understand that certain things happen to atoms when heat is applied to a substance. As with water, heat excites the atoms and makes them move faster. But what happens inside the atoms themselves? Germanium-72 proves that it's not as obvious as you think.
Germanium has 32 protons, while germanium has 72 40 neutrons. These protons form strong pairs that become weaker as the atom heats up. This makes sense in our water example. The problem is that at some point something unusual happens. When the temperature gets high enough, the bond between the proton pairs is getting stronger again . The reason for this is what is called a phase transition. Stabilization occurs when the transition begins, before it weakens again as the temperature continues to rise.
6. Iron-60 was found in Antarctic snow
Everyone knows iron, one of the most common elements in the world, so important that they literally named an entire century after it. Without iron, all our magnets would fall to the floor, not to mention our inability to make almost anything we make out of metal in the world. According to estimates , in the world there are about 800 billion tons unrefined iron ore containing 230 billion tons of iron, so we have a lot of work to do.
There are four stable isotopes of iron and 24 radioactive isotopes. One of them, iron-60, is the most stable, with a half-life of about 2.6 million years. It’s also not the kind of thing that just happens to show up anywhere. If you want your own iron-60, you’ll have to go hunting for it, because it’s created during stellar explosions, or supernovae. When a star explodes, iron-60 is ejected into the universe, and small amounts occasionally land on Earth. Some have even been found in Antarctic snows Of the 500 kilograms of pure snow that was collected for the sample, the scientists found five atoms of iron-60. The isotope was first discovered on Earth just 23 years ago in some deep-sea soil sediments.
5. Plutonium-244 was found on the ocean floor
Like iron-60, plutonium-244 isn't an isotope that just appears out of nowhere. Unlike iron, there are no plutonium isotopes you want to get too close to. There are 20 of them, all radioactive, but the most stable is plutonium-244.
Traces of plutonium-244 were found at at the bottom of the ocean in 2021, and it is believed that it has traveled quite a distance to get here. Plutonium-244 is produced under rather difficult conditions. In this case, the plutonium was formed when collision of two stars , which led to a powerful explosion. It is also likely to form in supernovae along with iron-60.
Plutonium-244 is not an isotope that we can easily create on Earth at all. Nuclear reactors produce different isotopes, but when plutonium-242 decays to 243, it has a half-life of only a few hours and cannot decay to 244. It has been theorized that a nuclear weapon explosion could potentially produce 244, but this remains only a theory and has not been observed.
4. Magnesium-18 decomposes to form
We have seen that astatine has a very short half-life, but scientists have created an isotope of magnesium that is so unstable that it is virtually impossible to observe. Normally, magnesium has three stable isotopes and 19 unstable ones.
Of the unstable ones, magnesium-18 and magnesium-19 are particularly interesting because of their incredibly short lifespans. Magnesium-19 has a half-life 5 picoseconds . That's five trillionths of a second. If that seems like a short amount of time, and it is, then get ready for magnesium-18.
Magnesium-18 has not been adequately measured because its lifetime is approximately one sextillionth of a second . It falls apart so quickly that the electrons can't even arrange the electrons around them to become a real atom. It's just a nucleus, and then it decays. This means that scientists can't study it directly, but just watch what it did during its short existence.
3. There are only 500 g of natural promethium in the world.
Promethium is an exceptionally rare element that has no stable isotopes, although it does have 38 unstable isotopes. It emits X-rays and is astonishingly rare. Right now, only about one pound natural promethium. However, we can also produce it in the laboratory by bombarding uranium-235 and neodymium-147 with neutrons.
In 1902, a Czech chemist named Bohuslav Braun suggested that promethium must exist along with six other undiscovered elements, and his hunch was confirmed a few years later when Henry Moseley confirmed that there must be something in the periodic table between neodymium and samarium with atomic weighing 61. It took another 20 years of searching before it was determined that whatever element 61 was, it would have no stable isotopes.
After years of searching, promethium was finally discovered not in nature, but in the laboratory, when scientists realized they could create elements and their isotopes.
For something so rare and also radioactive, you might think that it would have some serious uses in the world at large, but you would be wrong. Instead, it is mainly used for things like glow paint and nuclear batteries.
2. Strontium-90 is processed in your body like calcium.
Strontium is an alkaline earth metal and is number 38 on the periodic table. It has four naturally occurring stable isotopes, as well as 32 unstable ones. Of these isotopes, the one you want to keep an eye on is strontium-90, because it’s a little tricky.
Strontium-90 is highly reactive and can produce heat. This reaction makes it useful as a source of energy , and it is used in remote weather stations and even in spacecraft, as well as in the medical industry. Although it is not a stable isotope that occurs naturally, it is a byproduct of nuclear fission, from which most of the world's supply comes, although it was also produced by nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s.
Obviously, strontium-90 is something to avoid due to its radioactivity, but it has a sneaky way of making you sick if you come into contact with it. can be inhaled , but it can also enter the body through contaminated food and water. Once inside, your body will process it the same way it processes calcium. This means that radioactive strontium will penetrate your teeth and bones. Once it becomes a part of you, it can lead to bone cancer, bone marrow cancer, and soft tissue cancer in the areas around the radioactive parts.
1. Tritium is one of the most expensive things on Earth.
Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, and has seven isotopes, although only three occur naturally. The last one, hydrogen-3, is what we call tritium, and it is as rare as it is valuable. It can form naturally in the atmosphere when cosmic rays hit nitrogen , but only trace amounts are produced. It is also produced in nuclear explosions and as a by-product of nuclear reactors.
Tritium is used in the production of nuclear weapons and also for the production of luminous dials and for various scientific and research purposes. Pound for pound, it is also one of the most valuable substances on earth. For example, a gram of pure gold can cost around $70, depending on a number of factors. A gram of platinum can cost around $40. A gram of cocaine can cost around $120, depending on where you buy it. And a gram of tritium? That will cost you approximately $25,000 .
About four grams of tritium is used in nuclear weapons to improve efficiency and make the weapon more destructive, but at the same time lighter.
Оставить Комментарий