possible communities in the entire universe. The contemporary art community, naturally. The health-care community. The gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgendered community (did I get them in the right order?) The fundamentalist Christian community.
The NASCAR community. The American Girl community. The Civil War reenacter community. The koi enthusiast community. The Castle of Mad King Ludwig community. And on and on and on. I can imagine a tatting community without straining the slightest brain muscle (for those of you who’ve never heard of tatting, it is an obscure form of handwork). I can be certain there is preservation of spelunking songs community, in
fact I think I have their spiral-bound songbook somewhere. And though I might not have thought of it without sitting myself down to be quiet for a moment or two, I can even envision a nematode community, especially as these non-segmented worms were a key plot feature in the Val Kimler epic “Red Planet Mars.” But a “heavy element community?!
And yes, the heavy element community was very excited because some of its members discovered element 118, the heaviest element yet found.
It made me daydream for a while. Well, I could completely understand their excitement. It’s just like when the contemporary art community gets all buzzed when some of its members, perhaps browsing at the fringes of the “Liste” fair, discover the most aesthetic artist yet found. And frankly, I am, to my great fortune, in touch with the most advanced wing of the contemporary art community, people who fought over Julie Mehretu paintings a good three years ago at Art Basel/Miami when it is only now she’s featured as an artist to watch in the first-ever ‘art issue’ of Vanity Fair.
"From the three atoms that we found, the average lifetime of 118 is 0.9 milliseconds," says LLNL team member Dawn Shaughnessy. That's too short for scientists to study the new element's chemical properties, but the superheavy atom sits directly beneath radon on the periodic table. It's in the same family as helium and neon.”I couldn’t believe I would need to add a new box to my periodic table. I’d just finally memorized it as it was, with only 117 elements.
The 2005 experiments bombarded a rotating californium target with 10 million trillion calcium ions; this produced only two element 118 nuclei. The Livermore-Dubna team observed these nuclei decay first to element 116, then to element 114, then to element 112, after which they underwent fission and split apart.Of course I don’t stumble imagining the figure 10 million trillion; that’s only slightly more than how many contemporary artists there are these days. And this decaying and splitting apart business, that’s a cakewalk.
“The heavy element community will continue to search for new elements until the limit of nuclear stability is found," says LLNL team member Mark Stoyer. "It is expected that limit will be found.”When I was younger (much younger) I would deliberately write “X-Mas” instead of Christmas, thinking I was defying something, I guess, or subverting something, I suppose. I would send out Christmas cards but write in them, “Merry
“We're already beyond where the periodic table would have ended if it hadn't been for this extra stability effect," adds Moody. In 2007, the scientists plan to look for element 120 by bombarding a plutonium target with iron isotopes.
X-Mas,” thinking I was so…well so something. I suppose I was a member of the Insolent Youth community, if I may be anachronistic, because frankly in my youth, we didn’t have “communities.” Imagine my mortification when, upon becoming more educated, I learned “X” was a Greek letter that early Christians in fact had used, and writing ‘X-Mas’ wasn’t some hippie-casual-cool thing expressing ‘my generation’ (as in “Talking about My GEN-eration”), but a completely traditional, deeply rooted Christian custom.
I’ve never forgotten this episode. Realizing my hubris, I strove to learn more before thinking I was the cat’s meow by using a certain phrase, expressing a certain sentiment, or supporting a certain cause. I wish I could bottle this tendency, as I have longed wished I could bottle my ability to smoke cigarettes when the mood struck me and never think twice about ‘being hooked,’ because, frankly, I never was. But I cannot bottle it, I can’t even get the point across to friends who relentlessly pursue reckless aesthetic, moral, or political courses, leaping on bandwagons that are outmoded and eerily ill-conceived; pursuing behaviors guaranteed to bring poor, even tragic results; admiring figures who are certain charlatans. I can only channel my own energies, and set an example through my own behavior.
So during this time of reflective thinking and reconnections with loved ones and our respective “communities,” let me take the opportunity to wish everyone Merry X-Mas and the Happiest and Most Prosperous of New Years!
More later,
Lynne