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Student Seminar
Island of Stability
Ben Nichol, SFU Physics
Location: AQ3149
Synopsis
Ever since the synthesis of the first trans-uranium elements, chemists and physicists have wondered about creating heavier elements. Some such elements provide great use in medicine, calibration, military application, and more. As humanity began to create heavier elements, we noticed that they became less stable, decaying more quickly. Some heavier elements decay so quickly that it is difficult to study them at all. This could be predicted theoretically, but theory also shows us something intuitively unexpected. It is predicted that there is a range of isotopes that will begin to become more stable again, dubbed the island of stability, this range of isotopes is expected to be long-lived enough to study more in depth, with potentially all sorts of new applications.