decalithium is the 10th periodic table?
Dilithium vs. Lithium
- Thread starter doctorwho 03
- Start date
Yes, that's roughly what I remember as well, though exactly which novel or author escapes me at the moment. And as I think I mentioned the second (and third) atoms were said (if I remember correctly) to not exactly be in normal space. Which would explain why they could be so much stronger without being so denser. Was it "Dreadnought" or its follow-up ("Battlestations"?), as I think transwarp and trilithium were part of that plot??? But it has probably been a decade or so since I've read them.
Unfortunately, I do not remember which of the novels it was mentioned in. can anyone recall it?
From wikipedia, here's the real extended periodic table...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table_(extended)
Interestingly, there's a claim that 210 is about the maximum number of protons that can fit in a nucleus--I have no idea if that's the case.
If so, I guess dilithium is unnennium, which has a half-life of several microseconds.
I dunno, presumably in the Trek universe, the 210 protons cap would be incorrect, and unnennium might be paralithium, and dilithium might be element 169 (unehexinonium, I think--Latin's rusty) and trilithium element 219 (binennium?). Interestingly, unnennium would likely be a liquid at room temperature, if it didn't suddenly vanish on you.
Also of note is the article on the island of stability, where all these cools things would but probably don't exist.
I'd be happy with the notion that dilithium is a kind of element 3 lithium compound, but the properties of dilithium are so bizarre that I simply can't ascribe them to everyday matter. For what it's worth, the massive numbers of electrons in a very heavy element might be conducive to electromagnetic reflectivity, but that's only speculation. Trilithium, of course, is simply magical.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table_(extended)
Interestingly, there's a claim that 210 is about the maximum number of protons that can fit in a nucleus--I have no idea if that's the case.
If so, I guess dilithium is unnennium, which has a half-life of several microseconds.
I dunno, presumably in the Trek universe, the 210 protons cap would be incorrect, and unnennium might be paralithium, and dilithium might be element 169 (unehexinonium, I think--Latin's rusty) and trilithium element 219 (binennium?). Interestingly, unnennium would likely be a liquid at room temperature, if it didn't suddenly vanish on you.
Also of note is the article on the island of stability, where all these cools things would but probably don't exist.
I'd be happy with the notion that dilithium is a kind of element 3 lithium compound, but the properties of dilithium are so bizarre that I simply can't ascribe them to everyday matter. For what it's worth, the massive numbers of electrons in a very heavy element might be conducive to electromagnetic reflectivity, but that's only speculation. Trilithium, of course, is simply magical.
In the Trek universe, I wonder how many of the laws are different or have slight different variations? Maybe the Strong force is slightly more powerful there?
I'm of a different school of thought than some others in here... but it seems that some of you have the same idea (which is pretty rare in my experience on this topic.) In any case, I like my "school of thought" best. Your mileage may vary.
There's a tendency for patterns to repeat in nature... in a manner sometimes simulated in computers using fractal patterns. The idea is that you keep seeing the same pattern, repeated, as you zoom in closer and closer.
Well, I envision that the periodic table works in a similar fashion. That is, as you start off, you have a lot of very stable materials, but as you increase the atomic number, the materials become less and less stable, until you reach a zone where the materials are completely unstable. But... keep increasing the atomic number, and the periodic table "resets" and you have another replication of the pattern, starting with stable materials and becoming more unstable. Eventually... you'd "flip" again, and again, and again.
The mineral "dilithium" would fall into the same position on this "higher-level periodic table" as the mineral "lithium" would fall into on the periodic table we know. In the next "stable" region," you'd find "trilithium" falling into the same location in the "third-tier periodic table." And so forth. "Decalithium" would be in the tenth tier.
Presumably, as you go higher and higher, the materials are rarer and rarer, and less and less stable overall. So while first-tier "lead" is very stable, the "di-lead" would be somewhat less stable, "tri-lead" might be very unstable, and anything beyond that might be totally unstable.
These materials would have tremendously high atomic numbers... that is, incredibly massive atomic nuclei. However, they would have equally massive electron clouds... possibly even behaving in a way we've never envisioned. The repulsion between the massive nuclei might result in a material which is no more physically dense than conventional materials... but with huge distances between nuclei, and with electrons forming almost an "electron web" in the interstitial spaces.
Could such a situation occur with super-high atomic numbers? I don't see any reason why not. Do you? Would we expect conventional "atomic physics" to be redefined if we saw this sort of situation? I think we would.
So... I don't see "dilithium" as being a molecule involving lithium atoms. I see it as an entirely new (and as yet unknown in real life) form of matter.
Your thoughts?
^Well, like you said, patterns tend to repeat themselves, and recognition of one of the most important patterns lead to the creation of the periodic table--the pattern of chemical reactivity based on the number of electrons in the outer shell. We almost have to assume dilithium is an alkali metal, with one electron in its outer shell. There is absolutely no reason to name it "dilithium" otherwise. It's actually a rather bad name for an element in the first place, since it steps on the toes of chemical naming conventions (as has been pointed out, "dilithium" should be a compound of two lithium atoms, which is of course impossible; I'm not positive an ionic bond between two lithium atoms and, say, oxygen is particularly likely either--I've never heard of compound beginning with dilithium, disodium, or anything else of that ilk).
My point is that, regardless of the size of the nucleus, an atom with one electron in its outer shell will behave similarly (if not identically) to lithium, sodium, francium, unnennium, and so forth, to an even greater degree than elements in other periods.
Now, we can't really determine if superheavy atomic nuclei are even remotely plausible, unfortunately, since no one here is familiar enough with strong and weak interactions to say one way or the other. Good thing Trek physics and real physics don't have much in common.
I still wonder if anyone knows enough about electromagnetism to say whether or not a alkali-halogen salt, or a chemically pure alkali metal, could have the properties of a mirror.
My point is that, regardless of the size of the nucleus, an atom with one electron in its outer shell will behave similarly (if not identically) to lithium, sodium, francium, unnennium, and so forth, to an even greater degree than elements in other periods.
Now, we can't really determine if superheavy atomic nuclei are even remotely plausible, unfortunately, since no one here is familiar enough with strong and weak interactions to say one way or the other. Good thing Trek physics and real physics don't have much in common.
I still wonder if anyone knows enough about electromagnetism to say whether or not a alkali-halogen salt, or a chemically pure alkali metal, could have the properties of a mirror.
I think that the problem we run into with explaining some aspects of Trek is that there's the 'several layers of BS' problem, particularly compounded when TV writers with no scientific background invent 40 minutes of technobabble for an episode while trying and failing to be clever so they can explain away their previous mistakes.
We know what the Hollywood origins of lithium and dilithium are. At this point, I think it makes more sense to assume that dilithium is simply a significant part of a crystal compound for which the whole thing is named (and just is NOT the scientific name) and have done with it.
We know what the Hollywood origins of lithium and dilithium are. At this point, I think it makes more sense to assume that dilithium is simply a significant part of a crystal compound for which the whole thing is named (and just is NOT the scientific name) and have done with it.
Totally the best advice.
Never!
All of that makes perfect sense if you assume that the "repeated pattern" is identical in every way. However, that's not necessarily the case. If you have that many electrons, and that heavy of a nucleus, perhaps the electrons behave in dramatically different ways... so that every one of the super-heavy elements behaves more an perfect monocrystaline metal, rather than as we're accustomed to seeing. The "repeating pattern" may not be identical in every way... it just might happen to follow the same "tabular" pattern. That's what I was hypothesizing.
Very true... the fun is in trying to make the make-believe stuff fit with reality (or at least not overtly CONTRADICT stuff we already know about reality).
An odd question... perhaps defining, better, what "properties of a mirror" means would be helpful. There's no problem with getting a smooth, reflective surface, with almost any material. Opacity or transparency is an issue, as is inherent color... and of course, the free electrons in metals is what makes them best-suited as mirrors. But I've seen light-colored materials with surface finishes so fine that I'd say they could qualify as "mirror-like."
You wouldn't have asked that question unless you were thinking of something in particular... I'd love to hear the rest of the story.
Well, the matter-antimatter reaction is going to generate pions which degenerate very rapidly into the hardest of the hard gamma rays, and I figure any system designed to use those rays is going to want to contain those gamma rays... I always assumed dilithium is a mirror, and the chamber is immaculately crafted and mechanized in order to control the release of gamma rays into a dense, magnetically constricted plasma, used as the "transmission" between the core and the nacelles, where the plasma does unknowable things to unknowable materials, converting electromagnetic energy directly into gravity, which forms the warp field.
I have no idea how remote that is from actual science, but I think it's been established that gravity propagates no faster than light, anyway... for the sake of assumption, I suppose we can assume in the Trek universe it doesn't.
Anyway, what I wonder regarding dilithium is whether a material could be such a perfect gamma ray mirror that it would neither immediately blow up or get so hot it melted everything around it. I don't know enough about the properties of mirrors to say whether this is likely or even possible. I know free electrons are what reflect the photons, and I suppose more electrons may mean greater reflectivity (edit: although lead and uranium don't seem very reflective), but don't know how much energy is transferred to a mirror when light hits it. In dilithium's case, it would have to be very little, otherwise it would, as feared earlier, almost immediately blow up.
The TNGTM glosses over what happens to the gammas after the annihilation reaction, being more interested in putting forward the bizarre idea that dilithium, a form of matter, can be safely exposed to antimatter. But since Geordi never once hulked out, I guess the gamma rays are contained somehow.
I have no idea how remote that is from actual science, but I think it's been established that gravity propagates no faster than light, anyway... for the sake of assumption, I suppose we can assume in the Trek universe it doesn't.
Anyway, what I wonder regarding dilithium is whether a material could be such a perfect gamma ray mirror that it would neither immediately blow up or get so hot it melted everything around it. I don't know enough about the properties of mirrors to say whether this is likely or even possible. I know free electrons are what reflect the photons, and I suppose more electrons may mean greater reflectivity (edit: although lead and uranium don't seem very reflective), but don't know how much energy is transferred to a mirror when light hits it. In dilithium's case, it would have to be very little, otherwise it would, as feared earlier, almost immediately blow up.
The TNGTM glosses over what happens to the gammas after the annihilation reaction, being more interested in putting forward the bizarre idea that dilithium, a form of matter, can be safely exposed to antimatter. But since Geordi never once hulked out, I guess the gamma rays are contained somehow.
Well, those are bad for you too.I guess splitting the really hard gammas off into a "delta" part of an--after all--arbitrarily constructed spectrum makes some sense when you're dealing with high-frequency light as much as the Trek guys are.
Looking at some stuff, apparently making a gamma ray mirror (or a gamma ray lens) is indeed beyond our current materials science. Even our x-ray mirrors don't work particularly well, requiring grazing photon impacts to actually reflect the low-wavelength packet toward a collector.
Probably good that they found dilithium.
Probably good that they found dilithium.
I believe it claims the pulse created by the combination of the reactants is temporarily stored within the crystal and undergoes a frequency shift that is somehow crucial to its use in warp propulsion. So it assigns a couple of (somewhat different) useful properties to dilithium, I guess.
Well, I still accept (as much as any purely fictional concept can be accepted) that "dilithium" is a super-high-atomic-number element, not a chemical compound. And I really like the idea of that super-high number resulting in tremendous amounts of space between nuclei (far more than in "normal, first-periodic-table matter") and in the electrons, instead of forming "electron shells" as we're accustomed to in elements we know today, or forming an "electron sea" as seen in metallic elements, instead form a very loose "electron mesh."
This can explain:
(1) why dilithium, which ought to be extraordinarily dense if it were "conventional period table" material, isn't.
(2) Why dilithium can be briefly be exposed to ionized antimatter - the antimatter would be suspended in the (fairly vast) regions between the "electron mesh" and the nuclei. (Now, why you'd want to do that... THAT escapes me at the moment, but far be it from me to question Geordi...)
(3) Why dilithium can convert quanta-based energy (light, effectively) into power... behaving much like a "super-solar-cell."
I'm not sure how it allows "annoying Lazarus #1" and "annoying Lazarus #2" to do what they do, but hey, every concept has SOME flaws...
The best part of this approach (unlike the other one suggested above) is that it has the advantage of not being disprovable with real science. Where "Treknology" tends to go wrong is when they stay too close to known, real science, and thus come up with things that people who know even a little about real science realize are utterly impossible.
"Transparent aluminum" for instance. They'd have been so much better off had they called it "transparalum" or something like that. Because aluminum is a very real, and very well-understood, material... and there is no way to have it become transparent without losing its metallic properties (the only thing that make it useful for construction purposes). Any compounding which could be done to make it transparent would also serve to make it nonmetallic... and you have ceramic, not aluminum. We've already got aluminum-based ceramics... they're great materials... but we don't call them "aluminum," and they don't behave like aluminum.
