Hi folks,
I know it’s been a while since our last episode, Actinium. I would’ve liked to post Thorium tomorrow, November 29, but alas, the fates decided against that. Even for a year that’s been more hectic than usual, the past few weeks have been especially full.
Truly, it would be impossible for 2022 to be more disruptive to the podcast schedule than this year has been! (Famous last words, I know…)
Thanks for hanging in there. When we do get around to thorium, we’ll hear tales of another lady pioneer of chemistry, hopes for the green fuel of tomorrow, and New York City’s trendiest Superfund site.
So the next podcast is mainly the history of discovery o element 85?
And is this the last halogen we know of?
Well, there is Tennessine, element 117 and the element directly below Astatine in the dominant version of the Periodic table… Granted, it’s well past the last element that’s been manufactured in macroscopic amounts, I understand many aspects of periodicity breakdown in period 7, and it’s below the metalloid zig-zag if I’m not mistaken and is predicted to have properties closer to other superheavy radioactive metals than to the Halogens… So whether or not it’s a Halogen probably comes down to how you define the word Halogen(is it being the penultimate member of a period or is it some subset of the properties shared by Fluorine, Corine, Iodine, Bromine, and Astatine?
Jeffrey, thanks a ton for getting this one for me! 😉 I don’t think I could say anything better than that.
Regarding what the next episode would be about, I make no promises, but I’ve met a number of characters so far.
In all fairness, aside from Uranium, would all of the remaining elements suddenly vanishing from the Earth have any major negative impact on humanity?
I mean, everything after Plutonium is synthetic, and plutonium only forms naturally in trace amounts, and the only trans-Uranic element I’ve ever heard of having practical use is that Americium is used in some smoke detectors… no Uranium means no nuclear power as we know it, easily making it the most important member of Period 7, and no Thorium means a halt to developing nuclear reactors whose fuel isn’t a bit of refinement away from becoming the heart of a nuclear bomb, but otherwise, unless there are bigger holes in my knowledge than I’m aware of, what’s left of the periodic table is at best a scientific curiosity and at worst the star of a nuclear disaster.
Though, speaking of nuclear disaster, listeners of this podcast might want to check out Halflife Histories by Kyle Hill over on YouTube. It’s a series of short(~25-30 minutes each) documentaries about various nuclear incidents, that most recent being about the time some Brasilian salvagers got hold of some cesium from abandoned medical equipment and how the pretty, blue powder ended up comtaminating a whole city.
So are you going to finish this podcast with element 99 or 100, then the superheavy elements and finally the extension of the periodic table?
Also are you going to cover all the superheavies in a single episode?