• Since plutonium-244 cannot be easily produced by natural neutron capture in the low neutron activity environment of uranium ores (see below), its presence cannot plausibly be explained by any other means than creation by r-process nucleosynthesis in supernovae or neutron star mergers. (wikipedia.org)
  • Writing in the journal Nature Physics , Dr Kenta Hotokezaka, Professor Tsvi Piran and Professor Michael Paul show how a significant quantity of plutonium-244 found its way into the early Solar System following the neutron star merger. (astronomynow.com)
  • The plutonium-244 implies that a neutron star merger took place not much more than 100 million years before the formation of the Solar System," Piran tells Astronomy Now . (astronomynow.com)
  • The violent explosions that result from neutron star mergers produce large quantities of the heaviest elements through the 'r-process', which sees neutrons captured in large numbers by atoms to create heavier and heavier elements including plutonium and various precious metals. (astronomynow.com)
  • Plutonium-244 (244Pu) is an isotope of plutonium that has a half-life of 80 million years. (wikipedia.org)
  • This is longer than any of the other isotopes of plutonium and longer than any other actinide isotope except for the three naturally abundant ones: uranium-235 (704 million years), uranium-238 (4.468 billion years), and thorium-232 (14.05 billion years). (wikipedia.org)
  • Plutonium-244 is thus the shortest-lived and the heaviest primordial isotope yet detected or theoretically predicted. (wikipedia.org)
  • For years, scientists believed that transuranium elements did not occur in nature until 1971 when Hoffman published her discovery of small amounts of a plutonium isotope (plutonium-244) in a rock formation several billion years old. (acs.org)
  • Die chemiese element plutonium (Pu), met 'n atoommassa van ongeveer 239 u , het geen stabiele isotope nie en word dus as 'n radioaktiewe element geklassifiseer. (wikipedia.org)
  • Altesaam 21 isotope van plutonium is bekend. (wikipedia.org)
  • Plutonium is the heaviest primordial element by virtue of its most stable isotope , plutonium-244 , whose half-life of about 80 million years is just long enough for the element to be found in trace quantities in nature. (infogalactic.com)
  • A new multi-isotope plutonium standard for isotopic ratio measurements with Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) was created by gravimetric mixing of different single-isotope standards provided by IRMM (Pu-239, Pu-240, Pu-242, Pu-244). (uni-koeln.de)
  • The isotope of Plutonium, namely Pu-239+240, is a relatively new soil redistribution tracer in this challenge. (copernicus.org)
  • Small amounts of plutonium-239 are found in uranium ores - about 1 part in 10 11 of uranium - and plutonium-244 has been detected in the spectrum of the sun. (newscientist.com)
  • Plutonium was first produced and isolated on December 14, 1940, by a deuteron bombardment of uranium-238 in the 1.5 metre (60 in) cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley. (everipedia.org)
  • Plutonium is much more common on Earth since 1945 as a product of neutron capture and beta decay, where some of the neutrons released by the fission process convert uranium-238 nuclei into plutonium-239. (everipedia.org)
  • It is believed that heavier elements like gold, uranium, and plutonium were formed from a more violent event, such as two neutron stars merging. (techexplorist.com)
  • Yn 1940 is plutoanium ûntdekt troch Glenn Seaborg , Edwin McMillan , J. W. Kennedy en A. C. Wahl oan de Universiteit fan California - Berkeley neidat se uranium bombardearden mei deuterium yn in syklotron , mar dizze ûntdekking is in skoft geheim bleaun. (wikipedia.org)
  • Hjirmei waard in tradysje fuortsetten, want de twa foarôfgeande eleminten hjitten uranium nei Uranus en neptunium nei Neptunus . (wikipedia.org)
  • Uranium-238 is fissionable by fast neutrons, and is fertile , meaning it can be transmuted to fissile plutonium-239 in a nuclear reactor . (wikimili.com)
  • Plutonium was first produced and isolated on December 14, 1940 by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg , Joseph W. Kennedy , Edwin M. McMillan , and Arthur C. Wahl by deuteron bombardment of uranium-238 in the 60-inch cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley . (infogalactic.com)
  • Here, we combine recent advances in the Diffusive Gradients in Thin Films (DGT) sampling technique with ultrasensitive measurement by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) to calculate the remobilisation fluxes of plutonium, americium and uranium isotopes from the Esk Estuary sediments (UK), which have accumulated historic discharges from the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing facility. (bvsalud.org)
  • Although studies are in conflict, given the mathematics of the decay of plutonium-244, an exceedingly small amount should still be present in the Earth's composition, making plutonium a likely although unproven candidate as the shortest lived primordial element. (wikipedia.org)
  • Accurate measurements, beginning in the early 1970s, have detected primordial plutonium-244, making it the shortest-lived primordial nuclide. (wikipedia.org)
  • It is important to recall, however, that in order to be a primordial nuclide - one constituting the amalgam orbiting the Sun that ultimately coalesced into the Earth - that plutonium-244 must have comprised some of the solar nebula, rather than having been replenished by extrasolar meteoritic dust. (wikipedia.org)
  • In fact, in 1970 Dr. Darleane C. Hoffman discovered traces of naturally occurring primordial plutonium-244 in Precambrian bastnasite. (environmentalchemistry.com)
  • the Mountain Pass Mine in whose ores primordial plutonium was discovered was closed because, among other things, of a concern, albeit an extremely silly concern, about the radioactivity of lanthanide mine tailings. (atomicinsights.com)
  • In this study, no traces of plutonium-244 in the samples of bastnasite (taken from the same mine as in the early study) were observed, so only an upper limit on the 244Pu content was obtained: c244 (wikipedia.org)
  • Scientists have discovered tiny traces of plutonium-244 in ocean crust alongside radioactive iron-60. (techexplorist.com)
  • Any plutonium-244 and iron-60 existed when the Earth shaped from interstellar gas and dust more than four billion years ago has since a long time ago decayed, so current traces of them probably originated from recent cosmic events in space. (techexplorist.com)
  • Live interstellar plutonium-244 has been detected in meteorite dust in marine sediments, although the levels detected are much lower than would be expected from current modelling of the in-fall from the interstellar medium. (wikipedia.org)
  • Tiny amounts of plutonium are constantly reaching Earth from interstellar space and, over the millennia, have sunk down to the sea-floor. (astronomynow.com)
  • Comparing the abundance of plutonium-244 and its daughter isotopes in the sea floor with the amount needed to produce the xeon found in meteorites, the Jerusalem-based scientists realised that the influx of plutonium-244 at the birth of the Solar System was far greater than the average background abundance found in interstellar space. (astronomynow.com)
  • How many coulombs of positive charge are there in 7.90 kg of plutonium, given its atomic mass is 244 and that each plutonium atom has 94 protons? (nobody-guild.de)
  • Plutonium is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol Pu and atomic number 94. (everipedia.org)
  • Plutonium is the element with the highest atomic number to occur in nature. (everipedia.org)
  • Producing plutonium in useful quantities for the first time was a major part of the Manhattan Project during World War II that developed the first atomic bombs. (everipedia.org)
  • estimated its content in the rare-earth mineral bastnasite as c244 = 1.0×10−18 g/g, which corresponded to the content in the Earth crust as low as 3×10−25 g/g (i.e. the total mass of plutonium-244 in Earth's crust is about 9 g). (wikipedia.org)
  • Our data could be the first evidence that supernovae do indeed produce plutonium-244. (techexplorist.com)
  • Further calculations have indicated that the amount of curium was similar to the amounts of other heavy elements such as plutonium-244 and iodine-129, which are thought to have been produced by exploding stars. (chemistryworld.com)
  • En outre, il y a du plutonium 238/239/240 (Pu), de l' américium 241 (Am), du curium 242 (Cm) et du curium 244 (Cm) dans les 4 substances. (fukushima-diary.com)
  • With a half-life of only 80 million years, the plutonium-244 quickly decayed into more stable, daughter isotopes of elements such as xeon, which can be found today in meteorites. (astronomynow.com)
  • 'Lighthouse' is the one with two brown dwarfs/sub-brown dwarfs with an isotopic composition that couldn't be formed naturally (50% deuterium) that turn out to have Plutonium-244 in them, and two more are found to be under construction. (stackexchange.com)
  • Instead, it seems that something injected plutonium-244 - and other heavy elements - into the solar nebula that spawned the Sun and planets. (astronomynow.com)
  • Hoffman chose to look for plutonium in these ores since she expected that the geochemistry of plutonium dioxide would be very similar to the geochemistry of thorium dioxide and cerium dioxide minerals, both of which are significant constituents of most lanthanide ores. (atomicinsights.com)
  • Guon boarnen (benammen populêre media, en kearnwapen- en miljeu-aktivisten) neame plutonium sels de giftichste stof dy't de minsheid ken, mar ûnder in soad toksikologen hearsket de miening dat der gjin reden is om oan te nimmen dat de gemyske toksisiteit fan plutoanium grutter is as dy fan oare swiere metalen . (wikipedia.org)
  • Both plutonium-239 and plutonium-241 are fissile, meaning that they can sustain a nuclear chain reaction, leading to applications in nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors . (everipedia.org)
  • Plutonium-240 exhibits a high rate of spontaneous fission, raising the neutron flux of any sample containing it. (everipedia.org)
  • 1971. Environmental behavior of plutonium accidentally released at Thule, Greenland. (cdc.gov)
  • Mit verbeterte Spoorenanalytik weer 1971 nawiest worrn, dat Plutonium 244 Pu in bannig lütte Spooren in en poor Mineralen vörkummt. (wikipedia.org)
  • Dat is so wenig, dat dat erst 1971, lang na de künstlich Herstellen vun Plutonium in Karnreakters funnen worrn is. (wikipedia.org)
  • 244 Pu is met 'n halfleeftyd van sowat 80 miljoen jaar die stabielste. (wikipedia.org)
  • 244 Pu is mei in ferfaltiid fan rom 80 miljoen jier it stabylst. (wikipedia.org)
  • Having measured the extremely high level of radionuclide including Plutonium, Tepco concluded the substance originated from Fukushima nuclear plant. (fukushima-diary.com)
  • The Fat Man bombs used in the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945, and in the bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945, had plutonium cores. (everipedia.org)
  • Disposal of plutonium waste from nuclear power plants and dismantled nuclear weapons built during the Cold War is a nuclear-proliferation and environmental concern. (everipedia.org)
  • Other sources of plutonium in the environment are fallout from numerous above-ground nuclear tests, now banned. (everipedia.org)
  • The world at large learned of nuclear war pretty much at the same time as it learned of the existence of a "new" element, plutonium, about which we now know a great deal more than we did at the time of the announcement. (atomicinsights.com)
  • With respect to the particular issue of war, I will thus now advance the thesis - it may seem counterintuitive given common parlance for more than half a century - that the best route to minimizing the risk of nuclear war is to make more plutonium, not less of it. (atomicinsights.com)
  • Luis Alvarez realized that if a supernova had actually occurred, it would have also released plutonium-244, which would have accumulated alongside the iridium at the KT boundary. (berkeley.edu)
  • Isotopic evidence indicates the local biota are accumulating remobilised plutonium and demonstrates the DGT technique as a valid bioavailability proxy, which more accurately reflects the elemental fractionation of the actinides in the biota than traditional bulk water sampling. (bvsalud.org)
  • Plutonium is en cheemsch Element mit dat Atomteken Pu un de Ordnungstall 94. (wikipedia.org)
  • Man Plutonium mutt liekers as natürlich Element ansehn warrn. (wikipedia.org)
  • Thus there exists a psychological impetus, if not a rational impetus, always to associate plutonium with war, and the fear associated with this element has often caused its name to be written or spoken after adjectives like "deadly" and "dangerous" though plutonium need be neither of these things. (atomicinsights.com)
  • Plutonium-238 has a half-life of 88 years and emits alpha particles . (everipedia.org)
  • Excited about the possibility of the supernova discovery (strong evidence that the dinosaurs had been killed off by an imploding star would have made worldwide headlines), the team decided to perform the difficult plutonium tests. (berkeley.edu)
  • The presence of plutonium-244 in meteoritic composition without evidence the meteor originated from the formational disc of the Solar System supports the hypothesis that 244Pu was abundant enough to have been a part of that disc, if an extrasolar meteor contained it in some other gravitationally supported system, but such a meteor cannot prove the hypothesis. (wikipedia.org)
  • None of this plutonium-244 remains in the Solar System today, some four-and-a-half billion years later, but its presence can be inferred. (astronomynow.com)
  • The presence of plutonium-240 limits a plutonium sample's usability for weapons or its quality as reactor fuel, and the percentage of plutonium-240 determines its grade (weapons-grade, fuel-grade, or reactor-grade). (everipedia.org)
  • It is radioactive and can accumulate in bones, which makes the handling of plutonium dangerous. (everipedia.org)
  • In practice, though considerable inventories of it exist, plutonium is seldom either deadly or dangerous - indeed many lives have been saved by plutonium - but, as it is not new to tragedy that fear is often more powerful than reason, and thus this questionable and unfortunate association continues. (atomicinsights.com)
  • But double-checking their results by replicating the analysis led to disappointment: their first sample had been contaminated by an experiment going on in a nearby lab - there was no plutonium in the sample at all, contradicting the supernova hypothesis. (berkeley.edu)