paragraph_text: Neodymium is a chemical element with the symbol Nd and atomic number 60. Neodymium belongs to the lanthanide series and is a rare-earth element. It is a hard, slightly malleable silvery metal, that quickly tarnishes in air and moisture. When oxidized, neodymium reacts quickly to produce pink, purple/blue and yellow compounds in the +2, +3 and +4 oxidation state. Neodymium was discovered in 1885 by the Austrian chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach. It is present in significant quantities in the ore minerals monazite and bastnäsite. Neodymium is not found naturally in metallic form or unmixed with other lanthanides, and it is usually refined for general use. Although neodymium is classed as a rare-earth element, it is fairly common, no rarer than cobalt, nickel, or copper, and is widely distributed in the Earth's crust. Most of the world's commercial neodymium is mined in China.

paragraph_text: Oganesson is a synthetic chemical element with the symbol Og and atomic number 118. It was first synthesized in 2002 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, near Moscow in Russia, by a joint team of Russian and American scientists. In December 2015, it was recognized as one of four new elements by the Joint Working Party of the international scientific bodies IUPAC and IUPAP. It was formally named on 28 November 2016. The name is in line with the tradition of honoring a scientist, in this case the nuclear physicist Yuri Oganessian, who has played a leading role in the discovery of the heaviest elements in the periodic table. It is one of only two elements named after a person who was alive at the time of naming, the other being seaborgium; it is also the only element whose namesake is alive today.Oganesson has the highest atomic number and highest atomic mass of all known elements. The radioactive oganesson atom is very unstable, and since 2005, only five (possibly six) atoms of the nuclide 294Og have been detected. Although this allowed very little experimental characterization of its properties and possible compounds, theoretical calculations have resulted in many predictions, including some surprising ones. For example, although oganesson is a member of group 18 – the first synthetic element to be so – it may be significantly reactive, unlike all the other elements of that group (the noble gases). It was formerly thought to be a gas under normal conditions but is now predicted to be a solid due to relativistic effects. On the periodic table of the elements it is a p-block element and the last one of period 7.

paragraph_text: The energy levels of hydrogen can be calculated fairly accurately using the Bohr model of the atom, which conceptualizes the electron as "orbiting" the proton in analogy to the Earth's orbit of the Sun. However, the electromagnetic force attracts electrons and protons to one another, while planets and celestial objects are attracted to each other by gravity. Because of the discretization of angular momentum postulated in early quantum mechanics by Bohr, the electron in the Bohr model can only occupy certain allowed distances from the proton, and therefore only certain allowed energies.

paragraph_text: In chemistry, a synthetic element is a chemical element that does not occur naturally on Earth, and can only be created artificially. So far, 24 synthetic elements have been created (those with atomic numbers 95 -- 118). All are unstable, decaying with half - lives ranging from 15.6 million years to a few hundred microseconds.

paragraph_text: All consideration of nuclear electrons ended with James Chadwick's discovery of the neutron in 1932. An atom of gold now was seen as containing 118 neutrons rather than 118 nuclear electrons, and its positive charge now was realized to come entirely from a content of 79 protons. After 1932, therefore, an element's atomic number Z was also realized to be identical to the proton number of its nuclei.

paragraph_text: Uranium is a chemical element with symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-white metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weakly radioactive because all its isotopes are unstable (with half-lives of the six naturally known isotopes, uranium-233 to uranium-238, varying between 69 years and 4.5 billion years). The most common isotopes of uranium are uranium-238 (which has 146 neutrons and accounts for almost 99.3% of the uranium found in nature) and uranium-235 (which has 143 neutrons, accounting for 0.7% of the element found naturally). Uranium has the second highest atomic weight of the primordially occurring elements, lighter only than plutonium. Its density is about 70% higher than that of lead, but slightly lower than that of gold or tungsten. It occurs naturally in low concentrations of a few parts per million in soil, rock and water, and is commercially extracted from uranium-bearing minerals such as uraninite.

paragraph_text: In astronomy, those elements with higher atomic numbers than helium are termed "metals". The metallicity of Vega's photosphere is only about 32% of the abundance of heavy elements in the Sun's atmosphere. (Compare this, for example, to a threefold metallicity abundance in the similar star Sirius as compared to the Sun.) For comparison, the Sun has an abundance of elements heavier than helium of about ZSol = 0.0172 ± 0.002. Thus, in terms of abundances, only about 0.54% of Vega consists of elements heavier than helium.

paragraph_text: In the first decades of the 20th century, physics was revolutionised with developments in the understanding of the nature of atoms. In 1898, Pierre and Marie Curie discovered that pitchblende, an ore of uranium, contained a substance -- which they named radium -- that emitted large amounts of radioactivity. Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy identified that atoms were breaking down and turning into different elements. Hopes were raised among scientists and laymen that the elements around us could contain tremendous amounts of unseen energy, waiting to be harnessed.

paragraph_text: A period 4 element is one of the chemical elements in the fourth row (or period) of the periodic table of the elements. The periodic table is laid out in rows to illustrate recurring (periodic) trends in the chemical behaviour of the elements as their atomic number increases: a new row is begun when chemical behaviour begins to repeat, meaning that elements with similar behaviour fall into the same vertical columns. The fourth period contains 18 elements, beginning with potassium and ending with krypton. As a rule, period 4 elements fill their 4s shells first, then their 3d and 4p shells, in that order; however, there are exceptions, such as chromium.

paragraph_text: 1040 (10 duodecillion) yearsGiven our assumed half-life of the proton, nucleons (protons and bound neutrons) will have undergone roughly 1,000 half-lives by the time the universe is 1040 years old.  To put this into perspective, there are an estimated 1080 protons currently in the universe.  This means that the number of nucleons will be slashed in half 1,000 times by the time the universe is 1040 years old. Hence, there will be roughly 0.51,000 (approximately 10−301) as many nucleons remaining as there are today; that is, zero nucleons remaining in the universe at the end of the Degenerate Age. Effectively, all baryonic matter will have been changed into photons and leptons. Some models predict the formation of stable positronium atoms with a greater diameter than the observable universe's current diameter in 1085 years, and that these will in turn decay to gamma radiation in 10141 years.

paragraph_text: Helium (from Greek: ἥλιος, translit. Helios, lit. 'Sun') is a chemical element with symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas, the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. Its boiling point is the lowest among all the elements.

paragraph_text: Dalton proposed that each chemical element is composed of atoms of a single, unique type, and though they can not be altered or destroyed by chemical means, they can combine to form more complex structures (chemical compounds). This marked the first truly scientific theory of the atom, since Dalton reached his conclusions by experimentation and examination of the results in an empirical fashion.

paragraph_text: Francium was discovered by Marguerite Perey in France (from which the element takes its name) in 1939. It was the last element first discovered in nature, rather than by synthesis. Outside the laboratory, francium is extremely rare, with trace amounts found in uranium and thorium ores, where the isotope francium-223 continually forms and decays. As little as 20–30 g (one ounce) exists at any given time throughout the Earth's crust; the other isotopes (except for francium-221) are entirely synthetic. The largest amount produced in the laboratory was a cluster of more than 300,000 atoms.

paragraph_text: Supernova nucleosynthesis within exploding stars by fusing carbon and oxygen is responsible for the abundances of elements between magnesium (atomic number 12) and nickel (atomic number 28). Supernova nucleosynthesis is also thought to be responsible for the creation of rarer elements heavier than iron and nickel, in the last few seconds of a type II supernova event. The synthesis of these heavier elements absorbs energy (endothermic) as they are created, from the energy produced during the supernova explosion. Some of those elements are created from the absorption of multiple neutrons (the R process) in the period of a few seconds during the explosion. The elements formed in supernovas include the heaviest elements known, such as the long - lived elements uranium and thorium.

paragraph_text: A chemical element is a species of atoms having the same number of protons in their atomic nuclei (that is, the same atomic number, or Z). 118 elements are identified, of which the first 94 occur naturally on Earth with the remaining 24 being synthetic elements. There are 80 elements that have at least one stable isotope and 38 that have exclusively radionuclides, which decay over time into other elements. Iron is the most abundant element (by mass) making up Earth, while oxygen is the most common element in the Earth's crust.

paragraph_text: During the Second World War, Chadwick carried out research as part of the Tube Alloys project to build an atomic bomb, while his Manchester lab and environs were harassed by Luftwaffe bombing. When the Quebec Agreement merged his project with the American Manhattan Project, he became part of the British Mission, and worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory and in Washington, D.C. He surprised everyone by earning the almost-complete trust of project director Leslie R. Groves, Jr. For his efforts, Chadwick received a knighthood in the New Year Honours on 1 January 1945. In July 1945, he viewed the Trinity nuclear test. After this, he served as the British scientific advisor to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. Uncomfortable with the trend toward Big Science, Chadwick became the Master of Gonville and Caius College in 1948. He retired in 1959.

paragraph_text: In nuclear physics, beta decay (β - decay) is a type of radioactive decay in which a beta ray (fast energetic electron or positron) and a neutrino are emitted from an atomic nucleus. For example, beta decay of a neutron transforms it into a proton by the emission of an electron, or conversely a proton is converted into a neutron by the emission of a positron (positron emission), thus changing the nuclide type. Neither the beta particle nor its associated neutrino exist within the nucleus prior to beta decay, but are created in the decay process. By this process, unstable atoms obtain a more stable ratio of protons to neutrons. The probability of a nuclide decaying due to beta and other forms of decay is determined by its nuclear binding energy. The binding energies of all existing nuclides form what is called the nuclear band or valley of stability. For either electron or positron emission to be energetically possible, the energy release (see below) or Q value must be positive.

paragraph_text: Oxygen is a chemical element with symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group on the periodic table and is a highly reactive nonmetal and oxidizing agent that readily forms compounds (notably oxides) with most elements. By mass, oxygen is the third-most abundant element in the universe, after hydrogen and helium. At standard temperature and pressure, two atoms of the element bind to form dioxygen, a colorless and odorless diatomic gas with the formula O
2. Diatomic oxygen gas constitutes 20.8% of the Earth's atmosphere. However, monitoring of atmospheric oxygen levels show a global downward trend, because of fossil-fuel burning. Oxygen is the most abundant element by mass in the Earth's crust as part of oxide compounds such as silicon dioxide, making up almost half of the crust's mass.

paragraph_text: Alpha decay or α - decay is a type of radioactive decay in which an atomic nucleus emits an alpha particle (helium nucleus) and thereby transforms or 'decays' into an atom with a mass number that is reduced by four and an atomic number that is reduced by two. An alpha particle is identical to the nucleus of a helium - 4 atom, which consists of two protons and two neutrons. It has a charge of + 2e and a mass of 4u. For example, uranium - 238 decays to form thorium - 234. Alpha particles have a charge + 2, but as a nuclear equation describes a nuclear reaction without considering the electrons -- a convention that does not imply that the nuclei necessarily occur in neutral atoms -- the charge is not usually shown.

paragraph_text: Platinum is a chemical element with symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, silverish - white transition metal. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platina, meaning ``little silver ''.

Question: What undertaking included the person who discovered that the number of protons in each element's atoms is unique?
Answer: Manhattan Project