Solar System asteroids may have superheavy elements, scientist says

Important research area creation of superheavy elements It has attracted the attention of scientists from all over the world in search of new discoveries and technological advances. In an article published on the website SpeechTheoretical physicist Johann Rafelski, a professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson, USA, explains how he searches for these elements in places beyond Earth.

Although physicists have already produced heavier elements through nuclear reactions in laboratories, the results are unsatisfactory because these materials produced by the acceleration of light atomic nuclei and their collision with heavier nuclear targets are short-lived: only fractions of a second.

This is because protons in some elements have electromagnetic repulsive forces: like oganesson — It reaches 118, outpacing the attractive nuclear force that holds the nucleus together.

Searching for superheavy elements in asteroids

Elements heavier than iron, with atomic number 26, are produced naturally in massive events such as supernova explosions or neutron star collisions.

In this sense, Rafelski’s team needed to improve the research. knowing not only what kind of natural process produces these elements, but also what properties, such as mass densities, play a role. To do this, the researchers used a model that depicted the atoms of each of the heavy elements as a singular, charged cloud.

The model, which is effective for bulk particles, was applied to atoms of known density to calculate their chemical properties. Once proven functional, the matrix was adapted to calculate the density of elements with 164 protons and others on the same “island of stability”, a hypothesized place where superheavy elements might live longer.

Superheavy asteroids in the Solar System

Using the new model, scientists estimated that the mass density of some asteroids is higher than 22.59 g/cm3 of osmium, the densest chemical element on Earth.³. One such object is asteroid 33, nicknamed Polyhymnia, discovered in the main belt in 1854.

This asteroid, which is between 50 and 60 square kilometers in diameter, was estimated by Rafelski and colleagues to have a density of 75.28 g/cm3.³. The expectation is that some stable elements may exist naturally beyond the current periodic table, and even some stable elements in the spectrum with atomic numbers between 105 and 1182.

However, this high-density measurement does not necessarily mean that 33 Polyhymnia is extremely dense. Physical evidence is still needed, such as samples returned from asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in October last year, which are still being analyzed. That same month, NASA’s Psyche mission set out to collect samples from a metal-rich asteroid that had a better chance of hosting superheavy elements.

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