Talk:Tennessine

message: From the section 'Nuclear Stability and Isotopes': "Tennessine is the second-heaviest element created so far, and has a half-life of less than one second; this is longer than the predicted value used in the discovery report."
"[L]ess than one second [...] is longer than the predicted value" is awkward and uninformative. However, my knowledge of chemistry is not strong enough to confidently improve it. This sentence cites a research paper that I take to be the discovery report in question (Oganessian, Yu. Ts.; Abdullin, F. Sh.; Bailey, P. D.; et al. (2010)), but the paper gives multiple (predicted?) half-life values for Tennessine, depending on the isotope. I am not sure where to find the most current value, or whether it's even accurate to say that "Tennessine" (as opposed to an isotope of Tennessine) has any particular half-life.
Help from anyone who understands this topic would be appreciated.
--✶♏✶ 01:05, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I think what it really should say is that the two known isotopes (tennessine-293 and -294) both have half-lives under a second, but longer than what was predicted. You are right that it is at best weird and at worst mistaken to talk about the half-life of tennessine without specifying an isotope (and I am only giving it that much because you could easily make a very clichéd exercise out of this). But I will have to think for a moment to find a better way of writing this. Double sharp (talk) 03:56, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've edited it to "Tennessine is the second-heaviest element created so far, and all its known isotopes have half-lives. of less than one second. Nevertheless, this is longer than the values predicted prior to their discovery." Is this clearer, or do you think there's anything else that should be improved? Double sharp (talk) 04:01, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, ! That is certainly better. Ideally, in my mind, these two sentences would say, for the most stable known isotope, what the predicted and actual half-lives were in milliseconds. I wasn't able to determine that from reading the paper. --✶♏✶ 05:22, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sorry for not getting back to this earlier; I must have missed it by accident, and the paper's not always the easiest of reads. I suspect the theoretical values are the blue ones in our diagram of the observed decay chains for 294Ts and 293Ts shown in the article, but I'll check through the paper again and see if there's anything else it could possibly be referring to before adding them. Thank you for your excellent suggestions, and my sincerest apologies for this inexcusable delay! Double sharp (talk) 03:29, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  Apologies for the inexcusable lateness, but I think the figures I mentioned back in January 2018 are the right ones. The paper gives for 293Ts and 294Ts the observed lifetimes of 21 ms and 112 ms respectively (black), and the predicted lifetimes 10 ms and 45 ms respectively (blue). To convert these to half-lives we must multiply by ln 2, thus yielding 15 ms and 78 ms (observed) and 6.9 ms and 31 ms (predicted). I've put the lifetimes (predicted and observed) from the discovery paper into the article. Thank you again for raising this issue and I apologise again for being this inexcusably late! Double sharp (talk) 15:15, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Half-life of Tennessine 

message: The main article states the collaboration consisted of JINR, ORNL, Vanderbilt, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).  However,  TS Program includes the following institutions: JINR, ORNL, Vanderbilt, The University of Tennessee, LLNL, The Research Institute for Advanced Reactors (Russia), and University of Nevada, Las Vegas.  I suggest these be the list of collaborating institutions in the main article.
Bryan MacKinnon (talk) 21:44, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Collaboration 

message: It says that the decay chain of both Ts-293 and Ts-294 come from Ts-297. If that's the case, why isn't Ts-297 a known isotope? UB Blacephalon (talk) 22:29, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: That is because Ts-297 is only produced momentarily as an excited compound nucleus; its de-excitation results in the evaporation of several neutrons, leading to Ts-293 and Ts-294. Complex/Rational 14:20, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Alright, but shouldn't the fact that it's part of the decay chain make it an official isotope? UB Blacephalon (talk) 17:37, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: No, since Ts-297 is never produced as a ground-state isotope, and neutron evaporation is not a decay mode. Complex/Rational 12:33, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: What about it being a Metastable element? How did the neutrons evaporate, and why does it have to be a ground state? UB Blacephalon (talk) 03:08, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a compound nucleus, with too much energy to remain bound and too short a lifetime to be considered a nuclide. This energy is carried away by the "evaporated" neutrons. The linked article explains it in greater detail. Complex/Rational 21:14, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting. So why isn't it a Metastable element? UB Blacephalon (talk) 21:39, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tennesine-297?