Can I get some opinions on element creation

[Space_Goose]

Ok, so I have had a pretty good day of TV watching, I am right now watching a show about supernova's and the creations of All elements on earth.

This mourning, I was watching a show on UFO's. In this UFO Show, a piece of materiel that supposedly was recovered from Roswell was being analyzed to see what it was. The supporters of it being extra-terrestrial analyzed the material and broke it down into its individual elements. They claimed they had found an unidentified element in the material which proved the material was of extra-terrestrial origins. Now the skeptics also analyzed the material except they claimed it was mainly made of Silicon and contained no unknown elements. They concluded that it would not be unusual to find material such as this on the earth.

But personally I think both points are kind of dumb. I mean we have analyzed meteors, asteroid and even comets. And there is no element on them that doesn’t appear on earth in some quantity (at least that I have read). Granted, all these asteroid and comets ect. were all formed from the left over material that formed our solar system so I guess it would make since that they would be composed of like materials. But... would it really be reasonable to assume that if an extra-terrestrial people did indeed build a space craft and came to earth, would it really be composed of some exotic element not found on earth at all? I mean if all elements were created in Stars and resulting Super Novas, wouldn't elements pretty much be the same?

I would understand if they concluded that the combination of elements in an Alloy was unusual and not really created or found on earth but to try to prove a material is extra-terrestrial or not based on the fact that Earth does or doesn't have the elements it is composed of just sounds dumb to me. I realize this more of an opinion but I would love to hear yours.

 

[MeteorWayne]

This is typical UFO show pseudoscience with nothing to back it up.

 

[Gravity_Ray]

Well if you haven’t looked at a table of elements lately go take a look. There are scores of elements that humans have made terrestrially that don’t exist in nature. You can pretty much keep making elements until you hearts content. Most have no connection to real elements. Actually I have been out of school for a while, but I think pretty much anything with a larger atomic number of 56 can be called unobtainium :?

Anyway, back to the UFO thing, if you are traveling light years around the universe to come visit us to sample say our soups or women or putting some metallic object in our nether regions, then you probably WILL make your space ship from some exotic matter. But there is plenty of exotic elements right here on Earth made by Homo Sapiens that are very strange indeed and don’t exist naturally on Earth.

 

[Space_Goose]

Well if you haven’t looked at a table of elements lately go take a look. There are scores of elements that humans have made terrestrially that don’t exist in nature. You can pretty much keep making elements until you hearts content. Most have no connection to real elements. Actually I have been out of school for a while, but I think pretty much anything with a larger atomic number of 56 can be called unobtainium :?

Anyway, back to the UFO thing, if you are traveling light years around the universe to come visit us to sample say our soups or women or putting some metallic object in our nether regions, then you probably WILL make your space ship from some exotic matter. But there is plenty of exotic elements right here on Earth made by Homo Sapiens that are very strange indeed and don’t exist naturally on Earth.

Well the thing about the "Man Made" elements is they are made from natural Elements and even though they are man made, have the potential to form in Nature. The problem with them is that most of them decay so fast, that it would make them extremely hard to find in Nature as they would not exist very long before decaying into an element such as Plutonium or Uranium. Unless there are some I am not aware of, as I don't claim to be an expert.

So again one would assume that even if some alien race did create an element, they would have to make it from an element which already existed and it would have to be practical for use. To my knowledge (and again I am no expert. ) None of the Man made elements we have now would really be useful for building a space craft, a boat or even a bicycle unless it could be use as a power source such as we use Plutonium and Uranium.

I would expect them to have exotic alloys, mixtures of different Elements and metals but I guess I am still just wondering if we on Earth if we found a fragment of an Alien craft wouldn't analyze it and then say "Hmmm, we can identify every element in the composition but I have never seen them put together like this."

I'm not disagreeing with you but just keeping the discussion going.

 

[a_lost_packet_]

...Well the thing about the "Man Made" elements is they are made from natural Elements and even though they are man made, have the potential to form in Nature. The problem with them is that most of them decay so fast, that it would make them extremely hard to find in Nature as they would not exist very long before decaying into an element such as Plutonium or Uranium. Unless there are some I am not aware of, as I don't claim to be an expert.

Not necessarily. (more later)

So again one would assume that even if some alien race did create an element, they would have to make it from an element which already existed and it would have to be practical for use. To my knowledge (and again I am no expert. ) None of the Man made elements we have now would really be useful for building a space craft, a boat or even a bicycle unless it could be use as a power source such as we use Plutonium and Uranium.

There is a possible "break even" point on the periodic table where, higher up on the ladder, elements are thought to cease being so unstable and gradually become more stable. Recently, an experiment was conducted creating a somewhat "new" element which appears to be more stable and which lends credibility to the "break point" theory. I forget the element and the study, atm. But, you can probably find it on physorg, sciencedaily or some similar site. I also made a thread on it, I think, somewhere around here but, I don't remember where. The hope here is that we will eventually break into a new realm of "artificial" stable elements with new properties we can play with.

I would expect them to have exotic alloys, mixtures of different Elements and metals but I guess I am still just wondering if we on Earth if we found a fragment of an Alien craft wouldn't analyze it and then say "Hmmm, we can identify every element in the composition but I have never seen them put together like this."

I'm not disagreeing with you but just keeping the discussion going.

There are two ways to look at it. One is that novel combinations resulting in alloys that are not manufacturable in gravity could be discovered to exist. Another is that isotopes of certain existing elements in greater quantities than expected could be discovered and that these would be more likely to be found in systems with different properties than ours.

As this is more of a "hard science" forum, UFOs and the like are not usually discussed here. If they are, it is very, very brief. So, I'll leave off with what I've written already.

On "element creation":

If one knows what an atom is, has access to certain technology and is capable of bombarding it with certain particles and has enough energy, one can create virtually any element one wishes. For instance, it's simply not practical to try to create gold. It would be outrageously expensive and time consuming. Even the cheapest means usually end up producing gold for a short time. There is ultimately only one stable isotope for gold.

 

[bdewoody]

It was my understanding that although some new elements were created in laboratories they only lasted for a few seconds. So it is unlikely that anyone could ever create enough of a "new" element to build a space ship from.

 

[a_lost_packet_]

Here's the thread I referenced in my above post:

The Realm of Unobtainium Breached?

A wiki on "The Island of Stability"

A NYT article on it: Scientists Discover Heavy New Element

 

[neilsox]

Detailed chemical analysis is expensive so neither the UFO enthusiasts nor the debunkers can afford first class. If the black opps have new elements of ET origin, they are pretending they do not. If you ask for a $50 analysis, most labs will attempt to confirm what they think you want to hear.
New isotopes will likely be found, but the properties of most isotopes are almost the same as the most common isotope of that element. Element 100 to 130 have been or will be made, but few if any are useful, all are extremely costly. Cheaper than gold is very unlikely, so these activities tend to be poorly funded. Neil

 

[Space_Goose]

I want to be careful here not to drag this topic into sci-fi. But I have researched this a bit while working on my novel. For those familiar with the whole Bob Lazar story, I am sure you have heard mention of Element 115 being the power source of extra-terrestrial craft. Well now we have an element 115:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ununpentium

So I was researching Ununpentium and pretty much learned what was said above.

I suppose though one might be able to say if an extra-terrestrial civilization had the technology for space travel, they quiet probably would have better, cheaper, and more efficient ways of creating these elements. So far, that "Break Through" point with the elements becoming more stable is still just a theory.

But again this goes back to my point above. These new "Man made" elements are heavy elements and therefore are radioactive. They could potentially be used as a power source if they could be made more stable but could a space craft actually be made out of one of these elements? I just don't think it would be practical to create a craft out of one of these elements. I still believe that what neilsox said above, they might find different isotopes, and also might be some weird alloy.

I had no idea though that one of these analyses would be all that expensive. But yeah, I can see how the results of the analysis that these TV shows have are probably nothing to pay too much attention too.


I

 

[Astro_Robert]

As a materials science question, certain metals don't mix very well under 'normal' laboratory conditions, ie gravity. However some of these alloys can be created in microgravity: potentially in orbit, but much cheaper in a drop tower. I cannot think of any good examples off-hand, but some scientists do actually take molten droplets of certain metals, mx them up and drop them from towers into deep shafts so that the samples can cool and crystalize on the way down. If cooled in a laboratory these same elements might just form a mixture with separate crystal elements, rather than an alloyed compound.

Consider that oil and water don't mix, but milk and chocolate do (unless there really are chocolate cows :lol: ). It is a crude comparison, but it is like by dropping the metal equivalent of oil-water from a drop tower in molten form, that it would actually be mixed when it crystallized.

If there were aliens making spaceships, then one could suppose they might build there spaceships out of some unobtainable alloy such as these, rather than preying on the elemental 'island of stability' for their travel needs.

 

[a_lost_packet_]

This might help to further understand microgravity effects on certain compounds and why microgravity presents an opportunity for creating new ones:

ISS - Research - BCAT

IIRC, there was an ISS experiment involving two metals that would be incompatible for creating an alloy without the help of microgravity but, I'm not able to locate it atm.