Since element 99 — einsteinium — was discovered in 1952 at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) from the debris of the first hydrogen bomb, scientists have performed very few experiments with it because it is so hard to create and is exceptionally radioactive. A team of Berkeley Lab chemists has overcome these obstacles to report the first study characterizing some of its properties, opening the door to a better understanding of the remaining transuranic elements of the actinide series.
Published in the journal Nature, the study, "Structural and Spectroscopic Characterization of an Einsteinium Complex," was co-led by Berkeley Lab scientist Rebecca Abergel and Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Stosh Kozimor, and included scientists from the two laboratories, UC Berkeley, and Georgetown University, several of whom are graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. With less than 250 nanograms of the element, the team measured the first-ever einsteinium bond distance, a basic property of an element's interactions with other atoms and molecules.
LiveScience adds:
They found that einsteinium's bond length goes against the general trend of the actinides. This is something that had been theoretically predicted in the past, but has never been experimentally proved before.
Compared with the rest of the actinide series, einsteinium also luminesces very differently when exposed to light, which [study co-author Korey] Carter describes as "an unprecedented physical phenomenon." Further experiments are needed to determine why.
The new study "lays the groundwork for being able to do chemistry on really small quantities," Carter said. "Our methods will allow others to push boundaries studying other elements in the same way."
Journal Reference:
Korey P. Carter, Katherine M. Shield, Kurt F. Smith, et al. Structural and spectroscopic characterization of an einsteinium complex, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-03179-3)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2021, @02:19PM (9 children)
Is there any real-world application for this, or is it just another taxpayer-funded Democrat pork barrel project?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2021, @05:04PM
as opposed to all those crazy obscene amounts of money the Rs/MIC spend on the military every year
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2021, @05:21PM
It's not surprising that intellectually inferior anti-science morons like you lack the mental abilities to see the possible real-world applications of fundamental research, even while typing their ignorance on a device who's technology is a direct result of past fundamental reasearch that was also considered as having no possible real-world application by other intellectually inferior anti-science morons.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday February 04 2021, @05:44PM (1 child)
Yes, it "lays the groundwork for being able to do chemistry on really small quantities."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2021, @06:17PM
Why not just breed smaller scientists?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2021, @06:26PM (1 child)
Your type is just depressing, "we want products not knowledge."
Never mind that basic science is where the real breakthroughs often are: It was a study of jellyfish that discovered GFP which unlocked so many genetic studies:
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2008/press-release/#:~:text=Osamu%20Shimomura%20first%20isolated%20GFP,bright%20green%20under%20ultraviolet%20light. [nobelprize.org]
I wonder how many people were asking, "what are the real-world applications of jellyfish studies?"
Sometimes you have to let the scientists look in obscure places to get the really useful things.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 04 2021, @09:19PM
And the research of electricity started with the observation that you could get a dead frog's legs to move if you touch them with two connected metal rods.
Now experimenting with dead frog legs clearly is useless; even if there were anything coming from it that's useful in principle, it won't ever be useful in practice: Where would you get all those frogs from? ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday February 04 2021, @07:05PM
One tide bit of info you seem to have forgotten/overlooked.
Until just last month it was a Republican controlled Congress and President who created, passed, signed the budget that paid for this
I pity your lack of imagination of the possible applications of this research.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 05 2021, @12:24AM
We can't allow a mineshaft gap! Do you want the Chinese create Einsteinium death rays first?
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday February 05 2021, @10:51AM
Aspirin was found in willow-bark.
Penicillin was found in bread mould that had been wiped on a petri-dish.
Your artificial sweetener was found because someone literally said "Test this sample" and instead the guy heard "Taste this sample".
AstraZenica found its vaccine was far more effective when it accidentally dosed LESS than it had planned (a half-dose and a full-dose, as opposed to just two full doses).
Science is not a road, with "I want a high-tech material for semiconductors" at one end, and only one path there. It's a million scientists in a dark room bumping at every edge, feeling every corner, and occasionally going "What the hell?! Why does it do that?" and then finding uses for things. It's a billion connections, like neurons in the brain, where it takes just one fortuitous, accidental or even random connection to form for things to light up like a Christmas tree and join areas of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, pharmaceuticals, engineering, computer science, or whatever else where they had never previously been a connection made.
The real-world application of science is your entire modern life. From the guy who first noticed a material that didn't entirely conduct, but didn't entirely insulate either, through using a crystal to amplify a select frequency of radio waves unpowered, through to a transistor the size of a toaster that people what sure what use it would be, through to the dozens-of-billions of transistors processor that you typed your uninformed comment into.
Yeah, there are lots of dead-ends in that blind maze. All the time. But we have no idea where they are, or where the next big idea is, we just have to grope every inch until we hit upon something that could be useful. A hundred years ago Americium wasn't even discovered. It's a radioactive material with little obvious use, that's basically the leftover of uranium production in tiny, tiny quantities. And now it's in a billion smoke alarms.
And I guarantee you that every scientific area where you say "What's the point?", we can pick out something from that same area that's now crucial to your daily life. Literally every area of science contributes to every other area of science: engineering, maths, computer science, etc. all feed back into one another and give the occasional critical step-up to the next level of science for everyone.
Not every discovery is useful. Not every crackpot idea works out. But it doesn't matter, because just one in a million of them paying off results in things that literally change the way every human on the planet operates within a few years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2021, @08:36PM
Einsteinium's bond length goes against the general trend of the actinides.
Einsteinium also luminesces very differently when exposed to light.
This rises 4 questions. What is general trend for bond length for actinides, how actinides luminesce when exposed to light, is luminesce correct verb and why some things that everybody knows get repeated over and over everywhere while nobody bats an eyelid for stuff like the general trend for bond length of the actinides.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 05 2021, @01:13AM
This is an extremely expensive exotic element that decays by radioactivity.
The researchers couldn't get an exemption to the COVID-19 hysteria that has swallowed California. They work covered head to toe, with fancy respirators to collect stray radioactive atoms. That is more than enough to stop viruses.
Still, no exemption! By the time they got back to the lab, the sample had decayed away.
Even if the work required stand-up meetings with everybody French kissing for team spirit, an exemption would have been proper. The subject of the research was disintegrating away.
(Score: 2) by corey on Saturday February 06 2021, @02:19AM
Ah, I came here for the comments on element 115 and it’s anti gravity properties as described by Bob Lazar. How disappointing nothing yet.
Wonder if this element has any world changing properties.