4 ms·
"Because of the very small fusion reaction probability (the fusion cross section is ~0.3–0.6 pb or (3–6)×10−41 m2) the experiment took four months and involved
by acchow 10y ago
"Because of the very small fusion reaction probability (the fusion cross section is ~0.3–0.6 pb or (3–6)×10−41 m2) the experiment took four months and involved a beam dose of 4×1019 calcium ions that had to be shot at the californium target to produce the first recorded event believed to be the synthesis of oganesson.[9] Nevertheless, researchers are highly confident that the results are not a false positive, since the chance that the detections were random events was estimated to be less than one part in 100000."
Wow.
- nerdponx 10y agoI wonder how much it cost to make that atom
- kakarot 10y agoAtomic scientists get excited over the littlest things...
- mathattack 10y agoOn a per pound basis?
- acchow 10y agoI don't think we could produce a pound of this (that exists contemporaneously)
- djsumdog 10y agopounds? Come on, we're scientists and engineers here (well some of us). Grams .. or in this case, nanograms or picograms .. possibly attograms.
- semi-extrinsic 10y agoA single oganesson atom weighs 294 u, or 0.488 zeptograms. That's 0.000488 attograms.
- mathattack 10y agook, I'll settle for a metric ton!
- nerdponx 10y agoMore like "per atom" since they only made one atom.
- mathattack 10y agoWhen social sciences try to use the mathematical tools of physical sciences, I wish they would use the same measure of statistical significance: "the chance that the detections were random events was estimated to be less than one part in 100000"
- schoen 10y agoIt does make their results seem unconvincing in comparison... but can you supply them with 4×10¹⁹ research subjects to experiment on?
- will_pseudonym 10y agoI think that the larger problem with social science is that they conduct experiments under extremely specific conditions and then attempt to generalize to populations where those same conditions aren't present at all. And I'm not talking about the media's interpretation and broadcast of the findings. I'm talking about the papers themselves.
- Ntrails 10y agoIt's also pretty hard/expensive to get 10000 people involved in a long term experiment. So they tend to get tens of people and extrapolate from there. I don't think it's that they're lazy or incompetent - it's just hard to have the sort of scale required for the levels of certainty you can get from firing a bazillion calcium ions at something for months.
- jdavis703 10y agoWhy can't they do fewer studies but with larger sizes then? Do you then run into a problem of idled researchers?
- nonbel 10y agoThere is a sick culture that thinks being the "idea person" is the most important part of research, and that "idea people" should be in charge of implementing their ideas. A lot of issues stem from that.