Element ninety-three

✍ Scribed by C.

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1934
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 41 KB
• Volume: 218
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/s0016-0032(34)90419-1

✦ Synopsis

The fields of chemistry and atomic physics are due for some new excitement, if it has not arrived already. Up until recently it has been tacitly admitted by most self-respecting scientists that there are only 92 elements--no more, no less. As if to shatter such complacency, an Italian scientist, Dr. Enrico Fermi, deliberately shot neutrons at uranium (element 92 ) and believed that some stuck in the nucleus, thus creating element 93. This announcement has naturally been received with some scepticism in other scientific quarters and refutations have begun to appear. Now to make matters more interesting, just about the time doubts were being cast upon Dr. Fermi's synthesis of this new element, Odolen Kablic, a Czech engineer, announces the discovery of the new element Bohemium found in a natural state, associated with pitch blende, the well-known uranium ore. Apparently the existence of another element heavier than uranium has a logical basis, for scientists have never been satisfied that uranium was the progenitor for proto-actinium. The chemical behavior of this new substance corresponds to what the periodic table predicts for element 93. The atomic weight appears to be approximately 24o, another confirmation of the element's numerical identity. The pitch blende of Joachimsthal seems to contain I per cent. of it. The mean life of this radio-active element is estimated at perhaps 5o0,00o,000 years. Prof. Dolejsek of the University of Prague is attempting to obtain its x-ray spectrum.

C.