Quote: These elements are not psuedo, and in fact have potential beyond any existing/experimented element. Because of there already short life span and natural radioactive unstable-ness, they have an energy potential greater than Uranium. If these elements could be more sustainable then fission could be possible.

Even if we could make these elements stable fission would be useless. Because you had to put excess energy in to create this atom any energy you would receive from fission would just be a return of your original energy minus inefficiency loss. You would lose energy.

It is true that if all elements that can exist did naturally (right after the big bang) and then decayed the island of stability would be a myth, but you presented no evidence that they did.

Huh?
Thanks for clearing everything up, @Templar7.
We live in your shadow.

People could have made money off concrete (which the Romans knew about), but nobody saved the recipe in spite of its obvious utility; it was rediscovered in modern times.

About a century ago, a famous mathematician prided himself on working on things with no discernable use.

He turned out to be wrong; it turns out that a large amount of his work turns out to be useful in cryptography.

How is anyone to know what will ultimately be useful (or not)? Oftentimes knowledge is pursued for its own sake, or because it’s interesting or beautiful. Maybe this will be useful someday, say perhaps, finding methods for stabilizing radioactive nucleii (for FSM knows what purpose). But possibly it will never have practical use, beyond demonstrating science’s mastery of complicated particle accelerators and detectors.

So what? Lots and lots and lots of science has no immediate use.

Not every achievement is measured by its commercial value.

Yes, it is. Whether you admit it or not, it eventually is, otherwise its just an entertaining tidbit. Sort of like how clockwork reached a height in Ancient Greece that was not duplicated until the 17th century or 18th century. The knowledge was lost because no one could make money off of it; the hand crafting made it too labor intensive to replicate cheaply. If people could make money off of it, the knowledge would have been preserved.

Commercial applications for them may not even be possible, but having succeeded in creating them in the lab and being able to measure their existence is in itself a mighty reward for the endeavor. It is a step, another step, in our journey of knowledge.

Science is all about the ride, not the destination. Now that we know that these elements can exist, we must account for them in our observations. If they are created here, in our “small” particle accelerators, they are created also in the universe, in the death throes of stars, in the collisions of cosmic rays, maybe even in intergalactic space, the realm of the nucleus and nucleons. Maybe those big stable nucleus are there, waiting for the right observation, to tell them apart for what we now call “noise”.

We know something new and that is always good.

I am told over and over again that lots of money and resources go for science and those could be used in more important areas. Somehow some fail to understand our need for exploration and that the problems of the world have nothing to do with money or resources.

For me, the resources put into science are still not enough. More people need to be involved. We need everyone in.

That’s about the only way any research gets pushed forward anymore these days…if it can be used to kill a lot of people.

Not every achievement is measured by its commercial value.

Typical short-sighted human. Just because there are not practical applications of these elements today, does not mean there won’t be extremely important applications in the future. Perhaps during those crucial fraction of a second, these elements enable technology to perform cold fusion or warp space (artificial gravity, flt travel). Just because we don’t have immediate applications for knowledge, does not mean we shouldn’t seek it.

Your words remind me of a bit of history. After discovering the basic principle of electromagnetic induction in 1831, Michael Faraday was asked by a skeptical politician what good might come of electricity. “Sir, I do not know what it is good for,” Faraday replied. “But of one thing I am quite certain — someday you will tax it.”

These elements, for one, are not created. They existed, they have always existed in nature. The point for scientists was to recreate them in the lab. No one guessed at 116, it was a known element that escaped scientists grasp until recently, much like the concept of abiogensis escaped biologists even though they knew it had to be true for the theory of evolution to hold strong merit.

The Island of Stability is one of those theories that survives for some reason. It holds absolutely no merit, because for these elements to survive for more than a couple ms would involve conditions much different that obtainable in nature.

These elements are not psuedo, and in fact have potential beyond any existing/experimented element. Because of there already short life span and natural radioactive unstable-ness, they have an energy potential greater than Uranium. If these elements could be more sustainable then fission could be possible.

Unobtainium would be pretty awesome.

Until then, these ghostly things that evaporate as soon as they’re made should be called something else.

In science you can’t just arbitrarily define something as something different because you don’t like it. An element is defined as a pure substance containing one type of atom. Atoms consist of distinct nuclei, often (but not always)with an electron shell. Nothing in there defines the stability as a factor.

Also, how fleetingly they exist in human terms is not a factor to the universe. Tritium (Hydrogen isotope) has a halflife of 12 years. Radon a halflife of 3 days. On geologic or astronomic timescales, that is just as fleeting as ununhexium.