Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Some Chemistry: Artificial Elements, Anti-matter, Artificial Atoms (3)

The third kind of elements I discuss are the artificial atoms. Now these never happen or occur in nature. Not that they are very unstable and annihilate soon after their creation but also that they are impossible to exist in nature. Briefly, an atom in our world is a positive charge surrounded and encircled by an equal amount of negative charges. The centre material is very dense and very heavy comparing with the encircling entity which is very light and some how in a considerable distance whirling round the centre. In the simplest form, hydrogen is one heavy positive charge, called a proton surrounded by one electron of equal negative charge. This has specific chemical behaviour that causes it to be in a specific place of its own in the table of elements. This is a natural atom. Equally in the anti mater world we have an anti-atom of a negative charged centre encircled by a positive electrons. This one is also a natural creation in its own world. Now, people have been successful to create endless streams of positively charged electrons (that is, anti-electrons of anti-matter world). If they slow down this stream of positive electrons to a certain speed they can capture negative electrons of our world to encircle the positive electrons as if the negative electrons have mistaken them with the centre of hydrogen. These two, positive electron in centre and negative electron encircling and turning around it, create an artificial atom that behaves just like a hydrogen in its chemical properties, although the centre is not heavy like the centre of hydrogen. But in having a positive charge it is completely like the hydrogen centre. This artificial atom does not belong to any conceived world. Well, they are very short living comparing with any life span in this world, but people could investigate that whatever you can do chemically with hydrogen you can do with this atom which is called "positronium." (Scientists call a positive-charge electron a positron and frequently call a negative-charge electron a negatron.) Some say that it should go to the same place as hydrogen goes and they are both co-occupant of the same box in the table of elements. It is, though, eighteen hundred times lighter than a hydrogen atom. One might appreciate that both negative electrons of our world and the positive electron of anti-matter world are normality of two world that might make a short living system for a fraction of a second. More amazing than this artificial atom is another artificial atom called muonium. Muon is a positive charged particle. It is two hundred times heavier an electron, still it is nine times lighter than a proton at centre of hydrogen. It is completely like a positive electron as if fatter and heavier. This exists in radiation that days and nights showers from the sky. People can create it in machines called particle accelerators. Again, if one of this becomes slow enough, it can capture an electron and makes the electron to circle and turn around it and becomes something like hydrogen; a positive center and a negative orbit. But muonium is nine times lighter than a hydrogen atom. This artificial atom can exist for fractions of a second but enough to be studied like a chemical element with all properties of an hydrogen. For example hydronium is a water with an additional hydrogen. You can replace that additional hydrogen with a muonium and investigate its properties.It is very interesting we can have anti-muonium, with a negative charged muon in center and positive electron in orbit. We can have mu-muonium, a positive muon in center and a negative muon in orbit instead of electron. When there is a phenomenon, then there is a range of similar phenomena waiting to be discovered. And still, we have mesonic atoms. In this type we have an ordinary chemical element with one or many electrons turning round a heavy center. One electron might be replaced by a negative muon. That atom still shows its characteristic chemical properties as before, in spite of the fact that a fat negative muon of two hundred times heavier has sit in place of one of its orbiting electrons.

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