Radioactive element einsteinium measured for the first time, here's everything you need to

Einsteinium has been one of the most challenging elements to study. Discovered in 1952 and named for legendary physicist Albert Einstein, the discovery was made in airborne debris from the first full-scale hydrogen bomb explosion. After 70 years of being discovered, the scientists have measured einsteinium for the first time. This has given a close look at the element’s chemical properties and how it behaves. 

All that you need to know 

The researchers revealed that the findings helped in shedding some light on transplutonium elements that occupy the fringes of the periodic table. Such rare materials could also be used to discover other new elements. According to the reports by NBC news, Rebecca Abergel, a chemist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and co-leader of the research, said that this is kind of the holy grail of nuclear physics. She added that if we can produce heavy elements, then there has been no isolation yet. Also, this will help the scientists in understanding the properties of matter. 

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Elements that come in the same row as einsteinium are called actinides. Elements in these series are radioactive. However, two of them, thorium and uranium, occur naturally. Einsteinium behaves very differently from other metals in the periodic table. 

The experiment was done using a microscopic amount of einsteinium-254, it was half-life of 276 days. Abergel’s team measured the bond distance of einsteinium-254. This informs how the metal interacts and binds to other molecules. 

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In another significant development, NASA revealed new details about the mysterious origin of sunquakes-seismic activity on the sun during solar flares. These earthquake-like events release energy in the form of waves that ripple along the Sun’s surface, followed by a solar flare. For long, scientists thought that these quakes were driven by magnetic forces or heating of the outer atmosphere. However, the latest results by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, have found something different.

It all started in July 2011 when SDO observed a sunquake with unusually sharp ripples emanating from a moderately strong solar flare. Scientists managed to track the waves using a technique called helioseismic holography. As a result of this, the scientists saw  the surface ripples of a sunquake emerging from deep beneath the solar surface right after a flare occurred. The release by NASA read, “The scientists believe that these waves were driven by a submerged source, which was in turn somehow triggered by the solar flare in the atmosphere above. The new findings might help explain a long-standing mystery about sunquakes: why some of their characteristics look remarkably different from the flares that trigger them”. 

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(Image Credits: Pixabay)