[seqfan] Re: Another chemistry related sequence?

Antti Karttunen antti.karttunen at gmail.com
Thu Sep 3 19:34:57 CEST 2009


On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 4:44 PM, <seqfan-request at list.seqfan.eu> wrote:

>Message: 4
>Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 23:18:10 -0400
>From: Charles Greathouse <charles.greathouse at case.edu>

>I would be very happy to have sequences like these in the OEIS, if
>only they were well-defined and not arbitrary.  Stable at "the normal
>room temperature conditions" is ill-defined; half-life over 10^20
>years is arbitrary.

"Normal room temperature conditions" was my slightly tongue-in-cheek in this
context.
What I meant, that "not in the middle of the exploding super-nova
or other environments with considerable neutron bombardment".

Yes, my proposed half-life limit, "at least the half-life of U-238"
is _arbitrary_, but its arbitrarity is not in anyway related to
our human culture (e.g. some {number of our fingers}^k amount of earth
years, etc.),
but to the half-life of the heaviest isotope of the heaviest
naturally occurring (not just in trace amounts like Pu-244, here as
elsewhere
in our galaxy?) element.
E.g., if we sent this sequence to some other star system, "they"
would almost certainly get what it is all about.
(As a(92)=1, and after that, all the rest are zeros.)

>Perhaps isotopes by stability, except that that's not defined on the
>lower end unless/until all (or all but one) of 'stable' isotopes are
>found to have finite half-lives.

I guess including all the possible isotopes (also unstable)
would open another can of worms, as I surmise not all the most unstable
isotopes have not been found yet.
(E.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_boron tells that Boron-16
has half-life less than 190 picoseconds. What other isotopes with extremely
short half-lives there could be, and thus very hard to detect?)

And as somebody in this thread commented, including just isotopes which we
currently
know to be stable, leaves the possibility that later some of them are found
to having extremely
long half-lives.

So, only one caveat which remains, that not all the stable and "semi-stable"
isotopes of all elements have not been found yet? How plausible is that?


  From the data in
http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/amdc/nubase/nubtab03.asc
(See page http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/amdc/web/nubase_en.html )

I count

karttu at andorinha:~/Matikka_papereita$ fgrep " stbl " nubtab03.asc  | wc -l
257 (isotopes marked as fully stable)

Then eight isotopes >= Half-life of Uranium-238:
karttu at andorinha:~/Matikka_papereita$ fgrep " Gy " nubtab03.asc
040 0190   40K    -33535.20     0.19                           1.251 Gy
0.011  4-            02           IS=0.0117 1;B-=89.28 13;B+=10.72 13
087 0370   87Rb   -84597.795    0.012                         49.23  Gy
0.22   3/2-          02 82Mi14t   IS=27.83 2;B-=100
138 0570   138La  -86525        4                            102     Gy
1      5+            03           IS=0.090 1;B+=65.6 5;B-=34.4 5
147 0620   147Sm  -79272.1      2.4                          106.0   Gy
1.1    7/2-          92 70Gu14t   IS=14.99 18;A=100
176 0710   176Lu  -53387.4      2.2                           38.5   Gy
0.7    7-            98 03Gr02t   IS=2.59 2;B-=100
187 0750   187Re  -41215.7      1.4                           41.2   Gy
0.2    5/2+          91 01Ga01t   IS=62.60 2;B-=100;A<0.0001
190 0780   190Pt  -37323        6                            650     Gy
30     0+            03           IS=0.014 1;A=100;2B+ ?
232 0900   232Th   35448.3      2.0                           14.05  Gy
0.06   0+            91 95Bo18d   IS=100.;A=100;SF=11e-10
3;24Ne+26Ne<2.78e-10;2B- ?
238 0920   238U    47308.9      1.9                            4.468 Gy
0.003  0+            02 91Tu02d   IS=99.2745 106;A=100;SF=5.45e-5
7;2B-=2.2e-10 7

3 isotopes in Tera-years (10^12 yr range):
karttu at andorinha:~/Matikka_papereita$ fgrep " Ty " nubtab03.asc
115 0490   115In  -89537        4                            441     Ty
25     9/2+          99           IS=95.71 5;B-=100
123 0520   123Te  -89171.9      1.5                         >600
Ty        1/2+          94 96Al30t   IS=0.89 3;EC=100
152 0640   152Gd  -74714.2      2.5                          108     Ty
8      0+            97           IS=0.20 1;A=100;2B+ ?

6 isotopes in Peta-years (10^15 yr) range:
karttu at andorinha:~/Matikka_papereita$ fgrep " Py " nubtab03.asc
050 0230   50V    -49221.6      1.0                          150     Py
40     6+            95           IS=0.250 4;B+=83 11;B-=17 11
113 0480   113Cd  -89049.3      2.7                            7.7   Py
0.3    1/2+          98           IS=12.22 12;B-=100
144 0600   144Nd  -83753.2      2.3                            2.29  Py
0.16   0+            01           IS=23.8 3;A=100
148 0620   148Sm  -79342.2      2.4                            7     Py
3      0+            00           IS=11.24 10;A=100
174 0720   174Hf  -55846.6      2.8                            2.0   Py
0.4    0+            99           IS=0.16 1;A=100;2B+ ?
186 0760   186Os  -42999.5      1.4                            2.0   Py
1.1    0+            03           IS=1.59 3;A=100

8 isotopes in Exa-years (10^18 years) range:
karttu at andorinha:~/Matikka_papereita$ fgrep " Ey " nubtab03.asc
048 0200   48Ca   -44214        4                             53     Ey
17     0+            95 00Br63t   IS=0.187 21;2B-=?;B- ?
082 0340   82Se   -77594.0      2.0                           97     Ey
5      0+            03 99Pi08t   IS=8.73 22;2B-=100
096 0400   96Zr   -85442.8      2.8                           24     Ey
6      0+            98 99Ar25t   IS=2.80 9;2B-=100
100 0420   100Mo  -86184        6                              8.5   Ey
0.5    0+            97 97Al02t   IS=9.63 23;2B-=100
116 0480   116Cd  -88719        3                             30     Ey
4      0+            01 03Da09t   IS=7.49 18;2B-=100
130 0520   130Te  -87351.4      1.9                          790     Ey
100    0+            01 96Ta04td  IS=34.08 62;2B-=100
150 0600   150Nd  -73690        3                              6.7   Ey
0.7    0+            96 97De40td  IS=5.6 2;2B-=100
209 0830   209Bi  -18258.5      1.4                           19     Ey
2      9/2-          91 03De11td  IS=100.;A=100

One isotope in Zetta-years (10^21 yr) range:
karttu at andorinha:~/Matikka_papereita$ fgrep " Zy " nubtab03.asc
076 0320   76Ge   -73213.0      1.7                            1.58  Zy
0.17   0+            95 01Kl11t   IS=7.61 38;2B-=100

And one isotope in Yotta-years (10^24 yr) range:

karttu at andorinha:~/Matikka_papereita$ fgrep " Yy " nubtab03.asc
128 0520   128Te  -88992.1      1.7                            2.2   Yy
0.3    0+            01 96Ta04t   IS=31.74 8;2B-=100

All in all, there are 27 known non-stable isotopes with half-lives >= U-238:
karttu at andorinha:~/Matikka_papereita$ grep -c " [G|T|P|E|Z|Y]y "
nubtab03.asc
28
(K-40 = Potassium-40 has a half-life shorter than U-238).

Yours,

Antti Karttunen





> Charles Greathouse
> Analyst/Programmer
> Case Western Reserve University
> ----
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2009 12:38:38 +0300
> From: Antti Karttunen <antti.karttunen at gmail.com>
> Subject: [seqfan]  Another chemistry related sequence?
> To: seqfan at list.seqfan.eu
> Message-ID:
>        <79be8a7d0909030238u11af94e1h2a95d021ab305a26 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 3:30 AM, <seqfan-request at list.seqfan.eu> wrote:
>
> >
> > Message: 10
> > Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:24:16 -0400
> > From: franktaw at netscape.net
> > Subject: [seqfan] Re: Another chemistry related sequence?
> > To: seqfan at list.seqfan.eu
> > Message-ID: <8CBFA44015A488B-4550-B63B at webmail-m012.sysops.aol.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
> >
> > See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth-209.  Bismuth 209 was long
> > thought to be stable, but actually has a half-life of 1.9e19 years.  It
> > is likely that other isotopes will be found to be slightly unstable;
> > perhaps all are (proton decay is still a theoretical concept).
> >
> > Frankly, I think this whole area ought to be left out of the OEIS; but
> > as long as A007656 is present, I suppose there's no reason to exclude
> > it.
> >
> >
>
> Hmm, it's getting complicated. Exactly defined sequences seem to mix poorly
> with the real-life physics and chemistry. See also:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellurium-128
> with the longest known half-life, 2.2?1024 years.
>
> So, instead, I propose an arbitrary cut-point:
> "Number of isotopes of the element with atomic number n, whose half-life is
> >= half-life of Uranium-238"
> (i.e. 4.468x10^9 years). This age-limit is convenient also because
> it's an approximate age of the Earth and our Solar system.
> Then only problem would come if there were some isotope
> of another element than Uranium, with half-life so near to U-238
> that it would be beyond the reach of our measurements to determine
> whether it's shorter or longer than with U-238. But that is unlikely?
>
>
> Then, a(92)=1 and also a(83)=1.
>
> Question to Neil: Should I submit this sequence?
>
> Yours,
>
> Antti
>
>
>



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