First element discovered in Asia named ‘nihonium’, after Japan

Kyushu University professor Kosuke Morita, head of a team of scientists who discovered element 113, points to the superheavy synthetic element on a periodic table at a news conference at the RIKEN institute''s research centre in Wako, Saitama Prefecture, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo on June 9, 2016. Reuters

TOKYO: Japanese scientists behind the discovery of element 113, the first atomic element found in Asia — indeed, the first found outside Europe or the United States — have dubbed it "nihonium" after the Japanese-language name for their country.

"I believe the fact that we, in Japan, found one of only 118 known atomic elements gives this discovery great meaning," said Kosuke Morita, a university professor who led the discovery team from the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science.

"Another important meaning is that until now, all the elements in the periodic table have been discovered in Europe and the United States," he told a news conference on Thursday.

"There has not been a single atomic element found in Asia, Oceania or Africa."

Element 113 was first found in 2004, and the number refers to its atomic number, or the number of protons in the nucleus of the atom. It does not exist naturally and has had to be synthesised.

Though the element was publicly recognised by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) in December 2015, the name was not announced by IUPAC until Wednesday. It will become permanent after a five-month public review.

If approved, it will join other newly announced elements: moscovium for element 116, tennessine for element 117 and oganesson for element 118.

It will also not be the only element to be named after a country, having been preceded by polonium and francium after the places they were discovered. — Reuters Source: http://www.tribuneindia.com/

Read More........→November 18, 2016

Alien encounters of the absurd kind?

Alien encounters of all kinds have been experienced by humans through the ages; but just-released files released by the UK's National Archives on a defunct UFO-watching department give for the first time some indication of the vast number of 'flying saucer' sightings every year, and how many of them are in the spotter's mind. For more than half a century till it was closed down in December 2009, a unit of the Royal Air Force has been keeping tabs of UFO or unidentified flying object sightings, including scanning radio waves. The defence ministry closed its UFO desk because it served "no defence purpose" and was taking staff away from "more valuable defence-related activities", the files show. The unit was shut down in a year that showed its second highest number of sightings on record. By November, when it closed, it had had 643 reports, treble the number of the previous year (208), and far higher than over the first seven years of the decade, when annual sightings were a relatively stable 150. It was beaten only by 1978, when the release of the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind led to a surge in interest - and 750 sightings. The latest tranche of 25 declassified files covers the final two years of work carried out by the UFO desk, from 2007 to November 2009. They show UFOs were reported at several UK landmarks, including Stonehenge, the Houses of Parliament, and Blackpool Pier. But the files show that the unit was inundated by reports from the public about 'Chinese lanterns', the flying lights that have become popular at weddings and parties. This made a strong case for civil servants arguing for the unit's closure. Such sightings are unlikely in India, where loud and garish 'rockets' are preferred to quietly floating Chinese Lanterns on all occasions - apart from the fact that one can hardly see a star in the sky due to the all-pervasive atmospheric pollution. Nonetheless, there are sightings – for example, what can one say about mountaineers atop Kanchenjunga – the world's third-highest peak – sighting a coffin-shaped object in the sky that hovers high above them for a couple of seconds and then zips away? If just one climber, or even two, had seen it one could dismiss it as an oxygen-deprived hallucination. But how does one dismiss several climbers from at least two different expeditions seeing the same phenomenon? One might perhaps conclude with Hamlet that ''There are more things in earth and heaven, Horatio, than meet the eye.'' Source: Article

Read More........→November 17, 2016