Re:Physicists may now have a way to make element 120
by AnimalMuppet on Wednesday July 24, 2024 @11:06AM
(#41057839)
That won't be a hard limit. Your link says that it is a perturbative theory; it won't hold for a velocity that is a significant fraction of the speed of light. The Z/137 formula won't hold for large Z.
Re:Physicists may now have a way to make element 120
by pfdietz on Wednesday July 24, 2024 @02:07PM
(#41059902)
What would happen in sufficiently heavy nuclei is spontaneous creation of an electron positron pair, with the electron remaining bound and the positron emitted. This would require the binding energy of the electron be great enough for this to be energetically possible.
Re:Physicists may now have a way to make element 120
by perihelions on Wednesday July 24, 2024 @03:30PM
(#41060924)
I don't believe chemical elements would cease to exist above Z=137—they just get progressively stranger, electronic effects get more relativistic. It is not a hard limit.
(It's not as if the speed of electrons would *exceed* c above Z=137; it just approaches it asymptotically. The 1/137 factor comes from the non-relativistic approximation (simply, the plain Bohr model [0])).
Re:Physicists may now have a way to make element 120
by ForOldHack on Thursday July 25, 2024 @08:50PM
(#41074970)
Thanks for looking that up. I was going to look it up when I was not on mobile.
Imagine 500 years in the future when we have laptop particle accelerators... We may have whole diffent reality around 'strange'.
The line from the remake of 'the man who fell to earth.' "He has miscalculated the chirality."
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_quantum_chemistry