Ununpentium
| |||||
| Predicted properties | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name, Symbol, Number | ununpentium, Uup, 115 | ||||
| Chemical series | presumably poor metals | ||||
| Group, Period, Block | 15, 7, p | ||||
| Appearance | unknown | ||||
| Atomic weight | [288] amu | ||||
| Electron configuration | [Rn] 5f14 6d10 7s27p3 (a guess based upon bismuth) | ||||
| e-s per energy level | 2, 8, 18, 32, 32, 18, 5 | ||||
| State of matter | presumably a solid | ||||
Ununpentium is the temporary name of an unconfirmed synthetic superheavy element in the periodic table that has the temporary symbol Uup and has the atomic number 115. It has also been known as eka-bismuth.
History
On February 1, 2004, the synthesis of ununpentium and ununtrium were reported in Physical Review C by a team composed of Russian scientists at Dubna University's [1] Joint Institute for Nuclear Research [2], and American scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory . Their discovery of the element still awaits confirmation. [3]
The team reported that they bombarded americium (element 95) with calcium (element 20) to produce four atoms of ununpentium (element 115). These atoms, they report, decayed to ununtrium (element 113) in a fraction of a second. The ununtrium produced then existed for 1.2 seconds before decaying into natural elements.
Ununpentium is a temporary IUPAC systematic element name.
Ununpentium in popular culture
Ununpentium was theorized to be inside the island of stability. This probably explains why it was mentioned regularly in popular culture before it was actually created:
- In the world of UFO conspiracy theory culture during the 1980s and 1990s, Bob Lazar asserted that ununpentium functioned as "fuel" for UFOs, being "stepped up" to ununhexium under "particulate bombardment," and that the ununhexium's decay products would include antimatter. These ideas are considered to be pseudoscience by current physics.
- As a reference to this kind of UFO conspiracy theory, in the X-COM game series there is an element called elerium-115 or just elerium (the name "elerium-115" being an error as in this form the number refers to the atomic mass instead of the atomic number, meaning that elerium would have no neutrons, which is not possible).
- A fictional stable isotope of ununpentium occurs in the game Dark Reign.
- A fictional stable isotope of ununpentium occurs in the movie The Core.
- A fictional stable isotope of "Element 115" powered the time machine in the TV Show Seven Days.