Moscovium

Electron shell diagram for Moscovium

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Moscovium, element 115, (historic names: ununpentium, equivalent in fiction: Elerium-115) is a heavy radioactive element that doesn't exist in nature, although several isotopes of it have been artificially synthesized with about 50 atoms produced or suspected to have been produced since around 2003. In December 2015, it was recognized as one of four new elements by the Joint Working Party of international scientific bodies IUPAC and IUPAP. On 28 November 2016, it was officially named, based after Moscow, Russia, due to the collaborative efforts from Russian and American scientists and the historical significance of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research.

Properties

Because moscovium is a very heavy and unstable element, it's very unlikely to ever exist in sufficient quantities and with sufficient stability to participate in chemical reactions. However, it's possible to predict its properties based on the other trends shown in the periodic table. It is part of Group 15 of the periodic table, primarily known for containing nitrogen and phosphorus. However, it's most likely to have properties resembling bismuth, as they have similar electron structure. Also relativistic effects alter the relative energies of electrons in very heavy elements. Hence, while nitrogen, phosphorus and arsenic exhibit a range of oxidation states up to V (5 lost electrons), it's likely that moscovium will only go up to oxidation state III. While oxidation state I is rare in the elements between nitrogen and bismuth, moscovium is predicted to have a relatively stable I oxidation state. Upon ionization to this +1 charge, the radius of moscovium would be expected to shrink around five times more than with the analogous ionization of bismuth and it is expected to have properties closer to thallium(I) than the known but rare bismuth(I).

List of isotopes

The synthesized isotopes undergo alpha decay into the corresponding isotopes of nihonium, with half-lives increasing as neutron numbers increase.

Mc Moscovium	Z	N	Isotopic mass (u)	Half-life	Decay mode	Daughter isotope	Spin and parity
287Mc	115	172	287.19070(52)#	37(+44−13) ms	α	283Nh
288Mc	115	173	288.19274(62)#	164(+30−21) ms	α	284Nh
289Mc	115	174	289.19363(89)#	330(+120-80) ms	α	285Nh
290Mc	115	175	290.19598(73)#	650(+490-200) ms	α	286Nh
291Mc	115	176	291.19438(88)#	1 min#	α	287Nh	-->
299Mc	115	184	≈299	claimed stable by ufologists

In ufology

See the main article on this topic: Ufology

All of this would excite only physics and chemistry geeks if not for Bob Lazar (1959- ), who introduced it to UFO lore jumping from there to the X-COM video game franchise. According to him, UFO engines use element 115 to generate anti-gravity. Bob claims that the copper-orange colored fuel pellet aliens use is about the size of a fifty-cent piece, and weighs about 223 grams. Various UFO nuts and wannabe scientists have taken the idea and run with it, claiming that magic numbers of neutrons and protons and their configuration provide stability. There is hypothesizing that there should be a stable isotope of element 115, isotope 299. This isotope would contain the magic number of 184 neutrons. This would provide an interesting way of verifying the UFO stories told by Lazar. Should the right isotope of element 115 be synthesized and shown to be stable and capable of powering anti-gravity engines, Lazar's claim would have some serious support. Obviously, given that Lazar runs a website dealing in chemicals and sales of elements, he was smart enough to pick a number higher than any element discovered at the height of his fame in order to hide it from any scrutiny; no use saying carbon or phosphorus has magical powers, as we have more than enough of that to test it.

Lazar's claims state that bismuth has "unusual gravitational properties" (this is flatly false, though it may be a misinterpretation of the relativistic effects that control the chemical properties of heavier elements) and known chemical and nuclear characteristics of Element 115 are expected to be similar. Not that this matters, as the longest reported half-life of Moscovium isotope 290 is 650(+490-200) ms. This also let to some wannabe scientists to patent a Bismuth variation of the claimed Element 115 powered anti-gravity engine. The claims further state that the element was pressed into discs, then stacked and fused into a cylinder, then milled down to form a cone, and finally sliced to form the key piece of anti-gravity fuel. Again, this is physically impossible given that the element doesn't exist in nature and has been confirmed to be as highly unstable as all the other artificially-generated elements in that region of the periodic table. A few proponents of the claim still rave that there may be a magic "island of stability" (a particular combination of protons and neutrons) that would render this element stable, but no signs of such a region of the periodic table have emerged. Some of the elements heavier than uranium possess relatively stable isotopes (on the order of thousands of years) but by the time you get to 100, fermium, even the most stable isotopes last on the order of days and it only goes rapidly down from there. Still, the island of stability is a theoretical entity that is good, real physics — but even this wouldn't help the claims made about element 115, as expected half-lives in this island are on the order of minutes and seconds, which is indeed relatively stable in a region of the periodic table where the atoms last for milliseconds or less. Although for element 115 the half-lives are rising with rising neutron numbers. The current synthesized isotopes are a few neutrons short of the claimed magic 184 neutrons isotope ufologists claim is stable.

If one could synthesise the claimed stable element 115 isotope 299 with the magic number of 184 neutrons, this would prove Bob Lazar's claims more conclusively. This would shut down any critique of it to have an incredibly short half-life and radioactive unstability (which is pretty much conclusive right now), it would show that powering any device through the use of this element would be impossible, and certainly the 500 pounds that he claimed the US government had in their possession would also be an impossible claim. Literally. As that would consist of around 4.72 × 10²³ atoms, and with only 50 atoms ever made from all the collision experiments made on this subject in a decade, this would take some time for the government to procure — many times the age of the Universe, or so.

External links

• See the Wikipedia article on Moscovium.
• See the Wikipedia article on Isotopes of moscovium.