title: White Sea

text: The seabed of the central part and Dvina Bay is covered in silt and sand, whereas the bottom of the northern part, the Kandalaksha Gulf and Onega Bay is a mixture of sand and stones. Ice age deposits often emerge near the sea shores. Northwestern coasts are tall and rocky but the slope is much weaker at the southeastern side.


title: White Sea

text: The White Sea contains a large number of islands, but most of them are small. The main island group is the Solovetsky Islands, located almost in the middle of the sea, near the entrance to Onega Bay. Kiy Island in Onega Bay is significant due to a historic monastery. Velikiy Island, located close to the shore, is the largest island in the Kandalaksha Gulf.


title: White Sea

text: The White Sea is a water-filled depression in the block of a continental shelf known as the Baltic Shield. Its bottom is very uneven and contains the Kandalaksha Hollow in the northwest and the Solovetsky Islands in the south. Also, the Onega Bay has many small underwater elevations. The opening and the "gorlo" of the sea are rather shallow, with depths about 50 metres or less. There is an underwater ridge in the northern part of the "gorlo", resulting in maximum depths of 40 metres in that part. This hinders water exchange between the White and Barents seas. The exchange is assisted by the tides, which are semidiurnal (rising twice a day), with the amplitude increasing from 1 metre on the south to 10 metres in Mezen Bay. Currents are rather weak in the open seas with the speed below 1 km/h, but they significantly strengthen in the bays. The tidal waves are much faster than the regular currents and reach the speeds of 9 km/h in Mezen Bay, 3.6 km/h in Onega Bay and 1.3 km/h in the Kandalaksha Gulf.


title: White Sea

text: Rivers bring annually about 215 km of fresh water, on average, mostly to the Onega, Mezen and Dvina bays. The Northern Dvina alone may contribute up to 171 km in some years, with the Mezen, Onega, Kem and Vyg rivers adding up to 38.5, 27.0, 12.5 and 11.5 km, respectively. About 40% of this volume is brought during the snow melting in May, and the inflow is minimal in February–March. This inflow raises and lowers the sea level that promotes the water exchange with the Barents Sea. As a result, annually, about 2,000 km and 2,200 km flow in and out of the White Sea, respectively. The inflow of fresh water in spring decreases the surface salinity in the top 5–10-metre layer to 23‰ (parts per thousand) in the eastern and 26–27‰ in the western parts of the sea, reaching 10–12‰ in Dvina Bay; it also increases the content of silicon and silicates in water, which is a characteristic feature of the White Sea.


title: White Sea

text: Storms are the strongest in October–November. Shallow sea depths reduce the wave height to the average of 1 metre, sometimes reaching 3–5 metres. The sea is quiet in July–August.


title: White Sea

text: The climate varies between polar and moderate continental with frequent fogs and clouds. Winds are predominantly southwestern in winter with speeds of 4–8 m/s. They bring cold air from the south, establishing the temperature of about −15 °C (February) over most of the sea. The northern part is warmer at about −9 °C, sometimes reaching −6 °C, due to the warm air masses from the Atlantic. Arctic anticyclones, however, change winds to the northeastern ones, bringing much colder weather with temperatures of about −25 °C. Summers are cold, cloudy and relatively humid, with northeastern winds and frequent rains. Average July temperatures are 8–10 °C. Occasional southeastern winds bring warm air from Europe, raising the temperature to 17–19 °C and sometimes even to 30 °C. Annual precipitations increase from 282 mm in the north 529 in the south.


title: White Sea

text: In winter, from October–November to May–June, the sea freezes, with the average January water temperatures of −1.9 °C in the north, between −1.3 and −1.7 °С in the centre, and between −0.5 and −0.7 °С in the bays. These variations are due to the distribution of water salinity across the sea, which increases from 24 to 26‰ in the centre to 30.5‰ in the "gorlo", reaching 34.0–34.5‰ toward the Barents Sea. The freezing period varies from year to year as shown in the satellite image to the right. The ice is not stationary, but 90% of it is floating and is continuously removed to the Barents Sea. Ice thickness is usually about 40 cm but may reach 150 cm in cold winters.


title: White Sea

text: In summer, surface water warms up to 15 °С in the central part, but remains relatively cold in the north, at 7–8 °С, due to the water exchange between the surface and the cold bottom part which is enhanced by the shallow depths in the northern parts. Deep sea (about 100 m or more) is characterised by stable temperature (−1.4 °С) and salinity (30‰). The depth distribution of water temperature is very inhomogeneous across the sea. For example, at the exit from Dvina Bay, water temperature drops to 0 °C at the depth of only 12–15 m, but the same temperature is reached at 65 m at the exit from the Kandalaksha Gulf.


title: White Sea

text: Residents of Novgorod knew of the White Sea from at least the 11th century and rapidly explored its commercial significance for navigation and its coastal forests rich in fur animals. One of the earliest settlements near the sea shores grew up in the late 14th century at Kholmogory, on the Northern Dvina. From there, in 1492, a merchant fleet laden with grain and carrying ambassadors of Ivan III of Russia sailed to Denmark, marking the establishment of the first international seaport in Russia.


title: White Sea

text: The first foreign ship to arrive in Kholmogory was the English "Edward Bonaventure" commanded by Richard Chancellor in 1553. Together with two other ships under the command of Hugh Willoughby, his crew had sought a northern route to the Indies, especially India and China. The expedition, sponsored by King Edward VI of England and a group of about 240 English merchants, had London's authorisation to establish trade connections. The ships of Willoughby were separated and the other two were lost at sea, but "Edward Bonaventure" managed to pass the White Sea and reach Kholmogory, from where Chancellor was escorted to Moscow to meet the Russian Tsar, Ivan IV. Returning from Russia in 1554, Chancellor brought back a detailed description of Moscow and the Russian north, which were largely unknown to Europe, as well as a letter from the Tsar expressing desire to establish trade relations with England. In 1555 Queen Mary issued a charter authorising the Muscovy Company to trade with Russia via the White Sea route.


title: White Sea

text: Dutch ships soon followed the English, and the port of Kholmogory became busy with shipments of fur and fish. Local and foreign shops and factories were established in the city at that time. The port was reinforced with a fortress which sustained a siege by the Polish-Lithuanian army in 1613. Increasing traffic overloaded the port, which relied on shallow river-waters and had limited ship-capacity. However, instead of expanding the old port, Ivan IV established a new one down-river in 1584, called New Kholmogory, which from 1596 began to become known as Arkhangelsk.


title: White Sea

text: Between the 15th and early 18th centuries, the White Sea served as the major trade route in and out of Russia. This role decreased later after the foundation of Saint Petersburg (1703), which opened a more direct ice-free connection between Russia and the bulk of Western Europe via the Baltic Sea. From the 1920s, most northern Russian sea shipments diverted from the White Sea to the new port of Murmansk (officially founded in 1916), where the waters did not freeze in winter.


title: White Sea

text: The entire water area of the White Sea is the territorial waters of the Russian Federation . Any movement of foreign vessels on the White Sea is carried out in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation.


title: White Sea

text: The sea hosts more than 700 species of invertebrates, about 60 species of fish, and five species of marine mammals, including the friendly beluga, the white whale. Several other dolphin species, such as harbour porpoises, appear less frequently while larger whales such as bowhead, humpback and rorquals, northern bottlenose, orcas have been considered as rare visitors to the waters while actual frequency of occurrences within White Sea basin is not specified. The fishing industry is relatively small, mostly targeting harp seal, ringed seal, herring, saffron cod, European smelt, Atlantic cod and Atlantic salmon. There is a developing seaweed industry.


title: White Sea

text: The White Sea is an important traffic centre of northwestern Russia, interconnecting various economic regions and providing an outlet to the foreign routes. The White Sea–Baltic Canal links it through Lake Onega to the Baltic Sea and the major city and port of Saint Petersburg. The Baltic Sea, in turn, is connected by the Volga–Baltic Waterway to the Volga River, Black, Caspian, and Azov seas. The major ports on the White Sea are Arkhangelsk, Belomorsk, Onega, Mezen, Kem, Kandalaksha and Umba. Despite being frozen in winter, the sea remains navigable all year around because of deployment of icebreakers.


title: Extended periodic table

text: An extended periodic table theorises about chemical elements beyond those currently known in the periodic table and proven. , the element with the highest atomic number known is oganesson ("Z" = 118), which completes the seventh period (row) in the periodic table. All elements in the eighth period and beyond thus remain purely hypothetical.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Elements beyond 118 will be placed in additional periods when discovered, laid out (as with the existing periods) to illustrate periodically recurring trends in the properties of the elements concerned. Any additional periods are expected to contain a larger number of elements than the seventh period, as they are calculated to have an additional so-called "g-block", containing at least 18 elements with partially filled g-orbitals in each period. An "eight-period table" containing this block was suggested by Glenn T. Seaborg in 1969. The first element of the g-block may have atomic number 121, and thus would have the systematic name unbiunium. Despite many searches, no elements in this region have been synthesized or discovered in nature.


title: Extended periodic table

text: According to the orbital approximation in quantum mechanical descriptions of atomic structure, the g-block would correspond to elements with partially filled g-orbitals, but spin–orbit coupling effects reduce the validity of the orbital approximation substantially for elements of high atomic number. Seaborg's version of the extended period had the heavier elements following the pattern set by lighter elements, as it did not take into account relativistic effects. Models that take relativistic effects into account predict that the pattern will be broken. Pekka Pyykkö and Burkhard Fricke used computer modeling to calculate the positions of elements up to "Z" = 172, and found that several were displaced from the Madelung rule. As a result of uncertainty and variability in predictions of chemical and physical properties of elements beyond 120, there is currently no consensus on their placement in the extended periodic table.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Elements in this region are likely to be highly unstable with respect to radioactive decay and undergo alpha decay or spontaneous fission with extremely short half-lives, though element 126 is hypothesized to be within an island of stability that is resistant to fission but not to alpha decay. Other islands of stability beyond the known elements may also be possible, including one theorised around element 164, though the extent of stabilizing effects from closed nuclear shells is uncertain. It is not clear how many elements beyond the expected island of stability are physically possible, whether period 8 is complete, or if there is a period 9. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) defines an element to exist if its lifetime is longer than 10 seconds (0.01 picoseconds, or 10 femtoseconds), which is the time it takes for the nucleus to form an electron cloud.


title: Extended periodic table

text: As early as 1940, it was noted that a simplistic interpretation of the relativistic Dirac equation runs into problems with electron orbitals at "Z" > 1/α ≈ 137, suggesting that neutral atoms cannot exist beyond element 137, and that a periodic table of elements based on electron orbitals therefore breaks down at this point. On the other hand, a more rigorous analysis calculates the analogous limit to be "Z" ≈ 173 where the 1s subshell dives into the Dirac sea, and that it is instead not neutral atoms that cannot exist beyond element 173, but bare nuclei, thus posing no obstacle to the further extension of the periodic system. Atoms beyond this critical atomic number are called "supercritical" atoms.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Heavier elements beyond the actinides were first proposed to exist as early as 1895, when the Danish chemist Hans Peter Jørgen Julius Thomsen predicted that thorium and uranium formed part of a 32-element period which would end at a chemically inactive element with atomic weight 292 (not far from the 294 known today for the first and only discovered isotope of oganesson). In 1913, the Swedish physicist Johannes Rydberg similarly predicted that the next noble gas after radon would have atomic number 118, and purely formally derived even heavier congeners of radon at "Z" = 168, 218, 290, 362, and 460, exactly where the Aufbau principle would predict them to be. Niels Bohr predicted in 1922 the electronic structure of this next noble gas at "Z" = 118, and suggested that the reason why elements beyond uranium were not seen in nature was because they were too unstable. The German physicist and engineer Richard Swinne published a review paper in 1926 containing predictions on the transuranic elements (he may have coined the term) in which he anticipated modern predictions of an island of stability: he had hypothesised since 1914 that half-lives should not decrease strictly with atomic number, but suggested instead that there might be some longer-lived elements at "Z" = 98–102 and "Z" = 108–110, and speculated that such elements might exist in the Earth's core, in iron meteorites, or in the ice caps of Greenland where they had been locked up from their supposed cosmic origin. By 1955, these elements were called "superheavy" elements.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The first predictions on properties of undiscovered superheavy elements were made in 1957, when the concept of nuclear shells was first explored and an island of stability was theorised to exist around element 126. In 1967, more rigorous calculations were performed, and the island of stability was theorised to be centered at the then-undiscovered flerovium (element 114); this and other subsequent studies motivated many researchers to search for superheavy elements in nature or attempt to synthesize them at accelerators. Many searches for superheavy elements were conducted in the 1970s, all with negative results. , synthesis has been attempted for every element up to and including unbiseptium ("Z" = 127), except unbitrium ("Z" = 123), with the heaviest successfully synthesized element being oganesson in 2002 and the most recent discovery being that of tennessine in 2010.


title: Extended periodic table

text: As some superheavy elements were predicted to lie beyond the seven-period periodic table, an additional eighth period containing these elements was first proposed by Glenn T. Seaborg in 1969. This model continued the pattern in established elements and introduced a new g-block and superactinide series beginning at element 121, raising the number of elements in period 8 compared to known periods. These early calculations failed to consider relativistic effects that break down periodic trends and render simple extrapolation impossible, however. In 1971, Fricke calculated the periodic table up to "Z" = 172, and discovered that some elements indeed had different properties that break the established pattern, and a 2010 calculation by Pekka Pyykkö also noted that several elements might behave differently than expected. It is unknown how far the periodic table might extend beyond the known 118 elements, as heavier elements are predicted to be increasingly unstable. Glenn T. Seaborg suggested that practically speaking, the end of the periodic table might come as early as around "Z" = 120 due to nuclear instability.


title: Extended periodic table

text: There is currently no consensus on the placement of elements beyond atomic number 120 in the periodic table.


title: Extended periodic table

text: All of these hypothetically undiscovered elements are named by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) systematic element name standard which creates a generic name for use until the element has been discovered, confirmed, and an official name approved. These names are typically not used in the literature, and are referred to by their atomic numbers; hence, element 164 would usually not be called "unhexquadium" or "Uhq" (the IUPAC systematic name and symbol), but rather "element 164" with symbol "164", "(164)", or "E164".


title: Extended periodic table

text: At element 118, the orbitals 1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 3d, 4s, 4p, 4d, 4f, 5s, 5p, 5d, 5f, 6s, 6p, 6d, 7s and 7p are assumed to be filled, with the remaining orbitals unfilled. A simple extrapolation from the Aufbau principle would predict the eighth row to fill orbitals in the order 8s, 5g, 6f, 7d, 8p; but after element 120, the proximity of the electron shells makes placement in a simple table problematic.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Not all models show the higher elements following the pattern established by lighter elements. Pekka Pyykkö, for example, used computer modeling to calculate the positions of elements up to "Z" = 172 and their possible chemical properties in an article published in 2011. He found that several elements were displaced from the Madelung energy-ordering rule as a result of overlapping orbitals; this is caused by the increasing role of relativistic effects in heavy elements.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Burkhard Fricke et al., who carried out calculations up to element 184 in an article published in 1971, also found some elements to be displaced from the Aufbau principle as a consequence of relativistic effects.


title: Extended periodic table

text: , Trzhaskovskaya, and Yarzhemskii carried out calculations up to 164 (results published in 2006). Contrary to Pyykkö, as well as Fricke et al., they considered elements 158 through 164 to be homologues of groups 4 through 10, and not 6 through 12, noting similarities of electron configurations to the period 5 transition metals. Elements 111 and 112 are displaced from the plane to reflect differing configurations from Au and Hg.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Computational chemist Andrey Kulsha has suggested two forms of the extended periodic table. Based on their likely chemical properties, elements 157–172 are placed as eighth-period congeners of yttrium through xenon in the fifth period; this accords with the 2006 calculations of Nefedov et al. In Kulsha's first suggestion (2011, after Pyykkö's paper was published), elements 121–138 and 139–156 are placed as two separate rows (together called "ultransition elements"), related by the addition of a 5g subshell into the core, as they respectively mimic lanthanides and actinides. In his second suggestion (2016), elements 121–142 form a g-block (as they have 5g activity), while elements 143–156 form an f-block placed under actinium through nobelium.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Unsuccessful attempts have been made to synthesise the period 8 elements up to unbiseptium, except unbitrium. Attempts to synthesise ununennium, the first period 8 element, are ongoing .


title: Extended periodic table

text: The synthesis of element 119 (ununennium) was first attempted in 1985 by bombarding a target of einsteinium-254 with calcium-48 ions at the superHILAC accelerator at Berkeley, California:


title: Extended periodic table

text: No atoms were identified, leading to a limiting cross section of 300 nb. Later calculations suggest that the cross section of the 3n reaction (which would result in 119 and three neutrons as products) would actually be six hundred thousand times lower than this upper bound, at 0.5 pb.


title: Extended periodic table

text: From April to September 2012, an attempt to synthesize the isotopes 119 and 119 was made by bombarding a target of berkelium-249 with titanium-50 at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany. Based on the theoretically predicted cross section, it was expected that an ununennium atom would be synthesized within five months of the beginning of the experiment. Moreover, as berkelium-249 decays to californium-249 (the next element) with a short half-life of 327 days, this allowed elements 119 and 120 to be searched for simultaneously.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The experiment was originally planned to continue to November 2012, but was stopped early to make use of the Bk target to confirm the synthesis of tennessine (thus changing the projectiles to Ca). This reaction between Bk and Ti was predicted to be the most favorable practical reaction for formation of element 119, as it is rather asymmetrical, though also somewhat cold. (The reaction between Es and Ca would be superior, but preparing milligram quantities of Es for a target is difficult.) Nevertheless, the necessary change from the "silver bullet" Ca to Ti divides the expected yield of element 119 by about twenty, as the yield is strongly dependent on the asymmetry of the fusion reaction.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Due to the predicted short half-lives, the GSI team used new "fast" electronics capable of registering decay events within microseconds. No atoms of element 119 were identified, implying a limiting cross section of 70 fb. The predicted actual cross section is around 40 fb, which is at the limits of current technology.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The team at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, planned to begin experiments on the synthesis of elements 119 and 120 using the Bk+Ti and Cf+Ti reactions in 2019 using a new experimental complex. The team at RIKEN in Japan also planned to make attempts on these elements starting in 2018 with Cm targets using the Cm+V and Cm+Cr reactions. The former has been underway since June 2018.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Following their success in obtaining oganesson by the reaction between Cf and Ca in 2006, the team at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna started similar experiments in March–April 2007, in hope of creating element 120 (unbinilium) from nuclei of Fe and Pu. Isotopes of unbinilium are predicted to have alpha decay half-lives of the order of microseconds. Initial analysis revealed that no atoms of element 120 were produced, providing a limit of 400 fb for the cross section at the energy studied.


title: Extended periodic table

text: In April 2007, the team at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany attempted to create element 120 using uranium-238 and nickel-64:


title: Extended periodic table

text: No atoms were detected providing a limit of 1.6 pb for the cross section at the energy provided. The GSI repeated the experiment with higher sensitivity in three separate runs in April–May 2007, January–March 2008, and September–October 2008, all with negative results, reaching a cross section limit of 90 fb.


title: Extended periodic table

text: In June–July 2010, and again in 2011, after upgrading their equipment to allow the use of more radioactive targets, scientists at the GSI attempted the more asymmetrical fusion reaction:


title: Extended periodic table

text: It was expected that the change in reaction would quintuple the probability of synthesizing element 120, as the yield of such reactions is strongly dependent on their asymmetry. Three correlated signals were observed that matched the predicted alpha decay energies of 120 and its daughter Og, as well as the experimentally known decay energy of its granddaughter Lv. However, the lifetimes of these possible decays were much longer than expected, and the results could not be confirmed.


title: Extended periodic table

text: In August–October 2011, a different team at the GSI using the TASCA facility tried a new, even more asymmetrical reaction:


title: Extended periodic table

text: Because of its asymmetry, the reaction between Cf and Ti was predicted to be the most favorable practical reaction for synthesizing unbinilium, although it is also somewhat cold. No unbinilium atoms were identified, implying a limiting cross-section of 200 fb. Jens Volker Kratz predicted the actual maximum cross-section for producing element 120 by any of these reactions to be around 0.1 fb; in comparison, the world record for the smallest cross section of a successful reaction was 30 fb for the reaction Bi(Zn,n)Nh, and Kratz predicted a maximum cross-section of 20 fb for producing the neighbouring element 119. If these predictions are accurate, then synthesizing element 119 would be at the limits of current technology, and synthesizing element 120 would require new methods.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The synthesis of element 121 (unbiunium) was first attempted in 1977 by bombarding a target of uranium-238 with copper-65 ions at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany:


title: Extended periodic table

text: The first attempts to synthesize element 122 (unbibium) were performed in 1972 by Flerov et al. at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), using the heavy-ion induced hot fusion reactions:


title: Extended periodic table

text: These experiments were motivated by early predictions on the existence of an island of stability at "N" = 184 and "Z" > 120. No atoms were detected and a yield limit of 5 nb (5,000 pb) was measured. Current results (see flerovium) have shown that the sensitivity of these experiments were too low by at least 3 orders of magnitude.


title: Extended periodic table

text: In 2000, the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research performed a very similar experiment with much higher sensitivity:


title: Extended periodic table

text: These results indicate that the synthesis of such heavier elements remains a significant challenge and further improvements of beam intensity and experimental efficiency is required. The sensitivity should be increased to 1 fb in the future for more quality results.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Another unsuccessful attempt to synthesize element 122 was carried out in 1978 at the GSI Helmholtz Center, where a natural erbium target was bombarded with xenon-136 ions:


title: Extended periodic table

text: In particular, the reaction between Er and Xe was expected to yield alpha-emitters with half-lives of microseconds that would decay down to isotopes of flerovium with half-lives perhaps increasing up to several hours, as flerovium is predicted to lie near the center of the island of stability. After twelve hours of irradiation, nothing was found in this reaction. Following a similar unsuccessful attempt to synthesize element 121 from U and Cu, it was concluded that half-lives of superheavy nuclei must be less than one microsecond or the cross sections are very small. More recent research into synthesis of superheavy elements suggests that both conclusions are true. The two attempts in the 1970s to synthesize element 122 were both propelled by the research investigating whether superheavy elements could potentially be naturally occurring.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Several experiments studying the fission characteristics of various superheavy compound nuclei such as 122* were performed between 2000 and 2004 at the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions. Two nuclear reactions were used, namely Cm + Fe and Pu + Ni. The results reveal how superheavy nuclei fission predominantly by expelling closed shell nuclei such as Sn ("Z" = 50, "N" = 82). It was also found that the yield for the fusion-fission pathway was similar between Ca and Fe projectiles, suggesting a possible future use of Fe projectiles in superheavy element formation.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Scientists at GANIL (Grand Accélérateur National d'Ions Lourds) attempted to measure the direct and delayed fission of compound nuclei of elements with "Z" = 114, 120, and 124 in order to probe shell effects in this region and to pinpoint the next spherical proton shell. This is because having complete nuclear shells (or, equivalently, having a magic number of protons or neutrons) would confer more stability on the nuclei of such superheavy elements, thus moving closer to the island of stability. In 2006, with full results published in 2008, the team provided results from a reaction involving the bombardment of a natural germanium target with uranium ions:


title: Extended periodic table

text: The team reported that they had been able to identify compound nuclei fissioning with half-lives > 10 s. This result suggests a strong stabilizing effect at "Z" = 124 and points to the next proton shell at "Z" > 120, not at "Z" = 114 as previously thought. A compound nucleus is a loose combination of nucleons that have not arranged themselves into nuclear shells yet. It has no internal structure and is held together only by the collision forces between the target and projectile nuclei. It is estimated that it requires around 10 s for the nucleons to arrange themselves into nuclear shells, at which point the compound nucleus becomes a nuclide, and this number is used by IUPAC as the minimum half-life a claimed isotope must have to potentially be recognised as being discovered. Thus, the GANIL experiments do not count as a discovery of element 124.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The fission of the compound nucleus 124 was also studied in 2006 at the tandem ALPI heavy-ion accelerator at the Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro (Legnaro National Laboratories) in Italy:


title: Extended periodic table

text: Similarly to previous experiments conducted at the JINR (Joint Institute for Nuclear Research), fission fragments clustered around doubly magic nuclei such as Sn ("Z" = 50, "N" = 82), revealing a tendency for superheavy nuclei to expel such doubly magic nuclei in fission. The average number of neutrons per fission from the 124 compound nucleus (relative to lighter systems) was also found to increase, confirming that the trend of heavier nuclei emitting more neutrons during fission continues into the superheavy mass region.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The first and only attempt to synthesize element 125 (unbipentium) was conducted in Dubna in 19701971 using zinc ions and an americium-243 target:


title: Extended periodic table

text: No atoms were detected, and a cross section limit of 5 nb was determined. This experiment was motivated by the possibility of greater stability for nuclei around "Z" ~ 126 and "N" ~ 184, though more recent research suggests the island of stability may instead lie at a lower atomic number (such as copernicium, "Z" = 112), and the synthesis of heavier elements such as element 125 will require more sensitive experiments.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The first and only attempt to synthesize element 126 (unbihexium), which was unsuccessful, was performed in 1971 at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) by René Bimbot and John M. Alexander using the hot fusion reaction:


title: Extended periodic table

text: High-energy (13–15 MeV) alpha particles were observed and taken as possible evidence for the synthesis of element 126. Subsequent unsuccessful experiments with higher sensitivity suggest that the 10 mb sensitivity of this experiment was too low; hence, the formation of element 126 nuclei in this reaction is highly unlikely.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The first and only attempt to synthesize element 127 (unbiseptium), which was unsuccessful, was performed in 1978 at the UNILAC accelerator at the GSI Helmholtz Center, where a natural tantalum target was bombarded with xenon-136 ions:


title: Extended periodic table

text: A study in 1976 by a group of American researchers from several universities proposed that primordial superheavy elements, mainly livermorium, elements 124, 126, and 127, could be a cause of unexplained radiation damage (particularly radiohalos) in minerals. This prompted many researchers to search for them in nature from 1976 to 1983. A group led by Tom Cahill, a professor at the University of California at Davis, claimed in 1976 that they had detected alpha particles and X-rays with the right energies to cause the damage observed, supporting the presence of these elements. In particular, the presence of long-lived (on the order of 10 years) nuclei of elements 124 and 126, along with their decay products, at an abundance of 10 relative to their possible congeners uranium and plutonium, was conjectured. Others claimed that none had been detected, and questioned the proposed characteristics of primordial superheavy nuclei. In particular, they cited that any such superheavy nuclei must have a closed neutron shell at "N" = 184 or "N" = 228, and this necessary condition for enhanced stability only exists in neutron deficient isotopes of livermorium or neutron rich isotopes of the other elements that would not be beta-stable unlike most naturally occurring isotopes. This activity was also proposed to be caused by nuclear transmutations in natural cerium, raising further ambiguity upon this claimed observation of superheavy elements.


title: Extended periodic table

text: On April 24, 2008, a group led by Amnon Marinov at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem claimed to have found single atoms of 122 in naturally occurring thorium deposits at an abundance of between 10 and 10 relative to thorium. The claim of Marinov et al. was criticized by a part of the scientific community. Marinov claimed that he had submitted the article to the journals "Nature" and "Nature Physics" but both turned it down without sending it for peer review. The 122 atoms were claimed to be superdeformed or hyperdeformed isomers, with a half-life of at least 100 million years.


title: Extended periodic table

text: A criticism of the technique, previously used in purportedly identifying lighter thorium isotopes by mass spectrometry, was published in "Physical Review C" in 2008. A rebuttal by the Marinov group was published in "Physical Review C" after the published comment.


title: Extended periodic table

text: A repeat of the thorium-experiment using the superior method of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) failed to confirm the results, despite a 100-fold better sensitivity. This result throws considerable doubt on the results of the Marinov collaboration with regard to their claims of long-lived isotopes of thorium, roentgenium and element 122. It is still possible that traces of unbibium might only exist in some thorium samples, although this is unlikely.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The possible extent of primordial superheavy elements on Earth today is uncertain. Even if they are confirmed to have caused the radiation damage long ago, they might now have decayed to mere traces, or even be completely gone. It is also uncertain if such superheavy nuclei may be produced naturally at all, as spontaneous fission is expected to terminate the r-process responsible for heavy element formation between mass number 270 and 290, well before elements beyond 120 may be formed.


title: Extended periodic table

text: A recent hypothesis tries to explain the spectrum of Przybylski's Star by naturally occurring flerovium and element 120.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Element 118, oganesson, is the heaviest element that has been synthesized. The next two elements, elements 119 and 120, should form an 8s series and be an alkali and alkaline earth metal respectively. Beyond element 120, the superactinide series is expected to begin, when the 8s electrons and the filling of the 8p, 7d, 6f, and 5g subshells determine the chemistry of these elements. Complete and accurate CCSD calculations are not available for elements beyond 122 because of the extreme complexity of the situation: the 5g, 6f, and 7d orbitals should have about the same energy level, and in the region of element 160, the 9s, 8p, and 9p orbitals should also be about equal in energy. This will cause the electron shells to mix so that the block concept no longer applies very well, and will also result in novel chemical properties that will make positioning some of these elements in a periodic table very difficult.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The first two elements of period 8 will be ununennium and unbinilium, elements 119 and 120. Their electron configurations should have the 8s orbital being filled. This orbital is relativistically stabilized and contracted; thus, elements 119 and 120 should be more like rubidium and strontium than their immediate neighbours above, francium and radium. Another effect of the relativistic contraction of the 8s orbital is that the atomic radii of these two elements should be about the same as those of francium and radium. They should behave like normal alkali and alkaline earth metals (albeit less reactive than their immediate vertical neighbours), normally forming +1 and +2 oxidation states respectively, but the relativistic destabilization of the 7p subshell and the relatively low ionization energies of the 7p electrons should make higher oxidation states like +3 and +4 (respectively) possible as well.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The superactinides may be considered to range from elements 121 through 157, which can be classified as the 5g and 6f elements of the eighth period, together with the first 7d element. In the superactinide series, the 7d, 8p, 6f and 5g shells should all fill simultaneously. This creates very complicated situations, so much so that complete and accurate CCSD calculations have been done only for elements 121 and 122. The first superactinide, unbiunium (element 121), should be similar to lanthanum and actinium: its main oxidation state should be +3, although the closeness of the valence subshells' energy levels may permit higher oxidation states, just as in elements 119 and 120. Relativistic stabilization of the 8p subshell should result in a ground-state 8s8p valence electron configuration for element 121, in contrast to the ds configurations of lanthanum and actinium; nevertheless, this anomalous configuration does not appear to affect its calculated chemistry, which remains similar to that of actinium. Its first ionization energy is predicted to be 429.4 kJ/mol, which would be lower than those of all known elements except for the alkali metals potassium, rubidium, caesium, and francium: this value is even lower than that of the period 8 alkali metal ununennium (463.1 kJ/mol). Similarly, the next superactinide, unbibium (element 122), may be similar to cerium and thorium, with a main oxidation state of +4, but would have a ground-state 7d8s8p or 8s8p valence electron configuration, unlike thorium's 6d7s configuration. Hence, its first ionization energy would be smaller than thorium's (Th: 6.3 eV; element 122: 5.6 eV) because of the greater ease of ionizing unbibium's 8p electron than thorium's 6d electron. The collapse of the 5g orbital itself is delayed until around element 125; the electron configurations of the 119-electron isoelectronic series are expected to be [Og]8s for elements 119 through 122, [Og]6f for elements 123 and 124, and [Og]5g for element 125 onwards.


title: Extended periodic table

text: In the first few superactinides, the binding energies of the added electrons are predicted to be small enough that they can lose all their valence electrons; for example, unbihexium (element 126) could easily form a +8 oxidation state, and even higher oxidation states for the next few elements may be possible. Element 126 is also predicted to display a variety of other oxidation states: recent calculations have suggested a stable monofluoride 126F may be possible, resulting from a bonding interaction between the 5g orbital on element 126 and the 2p orbital on fluorine. Other predicted oxidation states include +2, +4, and +6; +4 is expected to be the most usual oxidation state of unbihexium. The superactinides from unbipentium (element 125) to unbiennium (element 129) are predicted to exhibit a +6 oxidation state and form hexafluorides, though 125F and 126F are predicted to be relatively weakly bound. The bond dissociation energies are expected to greatly increase at element 127 and even more so at element 129. This suggests a shift from strong ionic character in fluorides of element 125 to more covalent character, involving the 8p orbital, in fluorides of element 129. The bonding in these superactinide hexafluorides is mostly between the highest 8p subshell of the superactinide and the 2p subshell of fluorine, unlike how uranium uses its 5f and 6d orbitals for bonding in uranium hexafluoride.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Despite the ability of early superactinides to reach high oxidation states, it has been calculated that the 5g electrons will be most difficult to ionize; the 125 and 126 ions are expected to bear a 5g configuration, similar to the 5f configuration of the Np ion. Similar behavior is observed in the low chemical activity of the 4f electrons in lanthanides; this is a consequence of the 5g orbitals being small and deeply buried in the electron cloud. The presence of electrons in g-orbitals, which do not exist in the ground state electron configuration of any currently known element, should allow presently unknown hybrid orbitals to form and influence the chemistry of the superactinides in new ways, although the absence of "g" electrons in known elements makes predicting superactinide chemistry more difficult.


title: Extended periodic table

text: In the later superactinides, the oxidation states should become lower. By element 132, the predominant most stable oxidation state will be only +6; this is further reduced to +3 and +4 by element 144, and at the end of the superactinide series it will be only +2 (and possibly even 0) because the 6f shell, which is being filled at that point, is deep inside the electron cloud and the 8s and 8p electrons are bound too strongly to be chemically active. The 5g shell should be filled at element 144 and the 6f shell at around element 154, and at this region of the superactinides the 8p electrons are bound so strongly that they are no longer active chemically, so that only a few electrons can participate in chemical reactions. Calculations by Fricke et al. predict that at element 154, the 6f shell is full and there are no d- or other electron wave functions outside the chemically inactive 8s and 8p shells. This may cause element 154 to be rather unreactive with noble gas-like properties. Calculations by Pyykkö nonetheless expect that at element 155, the 6f shell is still chemically ionisable: 155 should have a full 6f shell, and the fourth ionisation potential should be between those of terbium and dysprosium, both of which are known in the +4 state.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Similarly to the lanthanide and actinide contractions, there should be a superactinide contraction in the superactinide series where the ionic radii of the superactinides are smaller than expected. In the lanthanides, the contraction is about 4.4 pm per element; in the actinides, it is about 3 pm per element. The contraction is larger in the lanthanides than in the actinides due to the greater localization of the 4f wave function as compared to the 5f wave function. Comparisons with the wave functions of the outer electrons of the lanthanides, actinides, and superactinides lead to a prediction of a contraction of about 2 pm per element in the superactinides; although this is smaller than the contractions in the lanthanides and actinides, its total effect is larger due to the fact that 32 electrons are filled in the deeply buried 5g and 6f shells, instead of just 14 electrons being filled in the 4f and 5f shells in the lanthanides and actinides respectively.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Pekka Pyykkö divides these superactinides into three series: a 5g series (elements 121 to 138), an 8p series (elements 139 to 140), and a 6f series (elements 141 to 155), also noting that there would be a great deal of overlapping between energy levels and that the 6f, 7d, or 8p orbitals could well also be occupied in the early superactinide atoms or ions. He also expects that they would behave more like "superlanthanides", in the sense that the 5g electrons would mostly be chemically inactive, similarly to how only one or two 4f electrons in each lanthanide are ever ionized in chemical compounds. He also predicted that the possible oxidation states of the superactinides might rise very high in the 6f series, to values such as +12 in element 148.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Andrey Kulsha has called the thirty-six elements 121 to 156 "ultransition" elements and has proposed to split them into two series of eighteen each, one from elements 121 to 138 and another from elements 139 to 156. The first would be analogous to the lanthanides, with oxidation states mainly ranging from +4 to +6, as the filling of the 5g shell dominates and neighbouring elements are very similar to each other, creating an analogy to uranium, neptunium, and plutonium. The second would be analogous to the actinides: at the beginning (around elements in the 140s) very high oxidation states would be expected as the 6f shell rises above the 7d one, but after that the typical oxidation states would lower and in elements in the 150s onwards the 8p electrons would stop being chemically active. Because the two rows are separated by the addition of a complete 5g subshell, they could be considered analogues of each other as well.


title: Extended periodic table

text: As an example from the late superactinides, element 156 is expected to exhibit mainly the +2 oxidation state, on account of its electron configuration with easily removed 7d electrons over a stable [Og]5g6f8s8p core. It can thus be considered a heavier congener of nobelium, which likewise has a pair of easily removed 7s electrons over a stable [Rn]5f core, and is usually in the +2 state (strong oxidisers are required to obtain nobelium in the +3 state). Its first ionization energy should be about 400 kJ/mol and its metallic radius approximately 170 picometers. With a relative atomic mass of around 445 u, it should be a very heavy metal with a density of around 26 g/cm.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The 7d transition metals in period 8 are expected to be elements 157 to 166. Although the 8s and 8p electrons are bound so strongly in these elements that they should not be able to take part in any chemical reactions, the 9s and 9p levels are expected to be readily available for hybridization. These 7d elements should be similar to the 4d elements yttrium through cadmium. In particular, element 164 with a 7d9s electron configuration shows clear analogies with palladium with its 4d5s electron configuration.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The noble metals of this series of transition metals are not expected to be as noble as their lighter homologues, due to the absence of an outer "s" shell for shielding and also because the 7d shell is strongly split into two subshells due to relativistic effects. This causes the first ionization energies of the 7d transition metals to be smaller than those of their lighter congeners.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Theoretical interest in the chemistry of unhexquadium is largely motivated by theoretical predictions that it, especially the isotopes 164 and 164 (with 164 protons and 308 or 318 neutrons), would be at the center of a hypothetical second island of stability (the first being centered on copernicium, particularly the isotopes Cn, Cn, and Cn which are expected to have half-lives of centuries or millennia).


title: Extended periodic table

text: Calculations predict that the 7d electrons of element 164 (unhexquadium) should participate very readily in chemical reactions, so that it should be able to show stable +6 and +4 oxidation states in addition to the normal +2 state in aqueous solutions with strong ligands. Element 164 should thus be able to form compounds like 164(CO), 164(PF) (both tetrahedral like the corresponding palladium compounds), and (linear), which is very different behavior from that of lead, which element 164 would be a heavier homologue of if not for relativistic effects. Nevertheless, the divalent state would be the main one in aqueous solution (although the +4 and +6 states would be possible with stronger ligands), and unhexquadium(II) should behave more similarly to lead than unhexquadium(IV) and unhexquadium(VI).


title: Extended periodic table

text: Element 164 is expected to be a soft Lewis acid and have Ahrlands softness parameter close to 4 eV. It should be at most moderately reactive, having a first ionization energy that should be around 685 kJ/mol, comparable to that of molybdenum. Due to the lanthanide, actinide, and superactinide contractions, element 164 should have a metallic radius of only 158 pm, very close to that of the much lighter magnesium, despite its expected atomic weight of around 474 u which is about 19.5 times the atomic weight of magnesium. This small radius and high weight cause it to be expected to have an extremely high density of around 46 g·cm, over twice that of osmium, currently the most dense element known, at 22.61 g·cm; element 164 should be the second most dense element in the first 172 elements in the periodic table, with only its neighbor unhextrium (element 163) being more dense (at 47 g·cm). Metallic element 164 should have a very large cohesive energy (enthalpy of crystallization) due to its covalent bonds, most probably resulting in a high melting point. In the metallic state, element 164 should be quite noble and analogous to palladium and platinum. Fricke et al. suggested some formal similarities to oganesson, as both elements have closed-shell configurations and similar ionisation energies, although they note that while oganesson would be a very bad noble gas, element 164 would be a good noble metal.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Elements 165 (unhexpentium) and 166 (unhexhexium), the last two 7d metals, should behave similarly to alkali and alkaline earth metals when in the +1 and +2 oxidation states respectively. The 9s electrons should have ionization energies comparable to those of the 3s electrons of sodium and magnesium, due to relativistic effects causing the 9s electrons to be much more strongly bound than non-relativistic calculations would predict. Elements 165 and 166 should normally exhibit the +1 and +2 oxidation states respectively, although the ionization energies of the 7d electrons are low enough to allow higher oxidation states like +3 for element 165. The oxidation state +4 for element 166 is less likely, creating a situation similar to the lighter elements in groups 11 and 12 (particularly gold and mercury). As with mercury but not copernicium, ionization of element 166 to 166 is expected to result in a 7d configuration corresponding to the loss of the s-electrons but not the d-electrons, making it more analogous to the lighter "less relativistic" group 12 elements zinc, cadmium, and mercury, which have essentially no transition-metal character.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The next six elements on the periodic table are expected to be the last main-group elements in their period, and are likely to be similar to the 5p elements indium through xenon. In elements 167 to 172, the 9p and 8p shells will be filled. Their energy eigenvalues are so close together that they behave as one combined p-subshell, similar to the non-relativistic 2p and 3p subshells. Thus, the inert pair effect does not occur and the most common oxidation states of elements 167 to 170 are expected to be +3, +4, +5, and +6 respectively. Element 171 (unseptunium) is expected to show some similarities to the halogens, showing various oxidation states ranging from −1 to +7, although its physical properties are expected to be closer to that of a metal. Its electron affinity is expected to be 3.0 eV, allowing it to form H171, analogous to a hydrogen halide. The 171 ion is expected to be a soft base, comparable to iodide (I). Element 172 (unseptbium) is expected to be a noble gas with chemical behaviour similar to that of xenon, as their ionization energies should be very similar (Xe, 1170.4 kJ/mol; element 172, 1090 kJ/mol). The only main difference between them is that element 172, unlike xenon, is expected to be a liquid or a solid at standard temperature and pressure due to its much higher atomic weight. Unseptbium is expected to be a strong Lewis acid, forming fluorides and oxides, similarly to its lighter congener xenon. Because of the analogy of elements 165–172 to periods 2 and 3, Fricke et al. considered them to form a ninth period of the periodic table, while the eighth period was taken by them to end at the noble metal element 164. This ninth period would be similar to the second and third period in that it is expected to have no transition metals.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Beyond element 172, another long transition series like the superactinides should begin, filling at least the 6g, 7f, and 8d shells (with 10s, 10p, and 6h too high in energy to contribute early in the series). These electrons would be very loosely bound, potentially rendering extremely high oxidation states reachable, though the electrons would become more tightly bound as the ionic charge rises.


title: Extended periodic table

text: In element 173 (unsepttrium), the outermost electron would enter the 6g subshell. Because spin–orbit interactions would create a very large energy gap between the 8p and 6g subshells, this outermost electron is expected to be very loosely bound and very easily lost to form a 173 cation. As a result, element 173 is expected to behave chemically like an alkali metal, and one by far more reactive than even caesium (francium and element 119 being less reactive than caesium due to relativistic effects).


title: Extended periodic table

text: Element 184 (unoctquadium) was significantly targeted in early predictions, as it was originally speculated that 184 would be a proton magic number: it is predicted to have an electron configuration of [172] 6g 7f 8d, with at least the 7f and 8d electrons chemically active. Its chemical behaviour is expected to be similar to uranium and neptunium, as further ionisation past the +6 state (corresponding to removal of the 6g electrons) is likely to be unprofitable; the +4 state should be most common in aqueous solution, with +5 and +6 reachable in solid compounds.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The number of physically possible elements is unknown. A low estimate is that the periodic table may end soon after the island of stability, which is expected to center on "Z" = 126, as the extension of the periodic and nuclides tables is restricted by the proton and the neutron drip lines and stability toward alpha decay and spontaneous fission. One calculation by Y. Gambhir "et al.", analyzing nuclear binding energy and stability in various decay channels, suggests a limit to the existence of bound nuclei at "Z" = 146. Some, such as Walter Greiner, predicted that there may not be an end to the periodic table. Other predictions of an end to the periodic table include "Z" = 128 (John Emsley) and "Z" = 155 (Albert Khazan).


title: Extended periodic table

text: It is a "folk legend" among physicists that Richard Feynman suggested that neutral atoms could not exist for atomic numbers greater than "Z" = 137, on the grounds that the relativistic Dirac equation predicts that the ground-state energy of the innermost electron in such an atom would be an imaginary number. Here, the number 137 arises as the inverse of the fine-structure constant. By this argument, neutral atoms cannot exist beyond atomic number 137, and therefore a periodic table of elements based on electron orbitals breaks down at this point. However, this argument presumes that the atomic nucleus is pointlike. A more accurate calculation must take into account the small, but nonzero, size of the nucleus, which is predicted to push the limit further to "Z" ≈ 173.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The Bohr model exhibits difficulty for atoms with atomic number greater than 137, for the speed of an electron in a 1s electron orbital, "v", is given by


title: Extended periodic table

text: where "Z" is the atomic number, and "α" is the fine-structure constant, a measure of the strength of electromagnetic interactions. Under this approximation, any element with an atomic number of greater than 137 would require 1s electrons to be traveling faster than "c", the speed of light. Hence, the non-relativistic Bohr model is inaccurate when applied to such an element.


title: Extended periodic table

text: where "m" is the rest mass of the electron. For "Z" > 137, the wave function of the Dirac ground state is oscillatory, rather than bound, and there is no gap between the positive and negative energy spectra, as in the Klein paradox. More accurate calculations taking into account the effects of the finite size of the nucleus indicate that the binding energy first exceeds 2"mc" for "Z" > "Z" ≈ 173. For "Z" > "Z", if the innermost orbital (1s) is not filled, the electric field of the nucleus will pull an electron out of the vacuum, resulting in the spontaneous emission of a positron. This diving of the 1s subshell into the negative continuum has often been taken to constitute an "end" to the periodic table, although more detailed treatments suggest a less bleak outcome.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Atoms with atomic numbers above "Z" ≈ 173 have been termed "supercritical" atoms. Supercritical atoms cannot be totally ionised because their 1s subshell would be filled by spontaneous pair creation in which an electron-positron pair is created from the negative continuum, with the electron being bound and the positron escaping. However, the strong field around the atomic nucleus is restricted to a very small region of space, so that the Pauli exclusion principle forbids further spontaneous pair creation once the subshells that have dived into the negative continuum are filled. Elements 173–184 have been termed "weakly supercritical" atoms as for them only the 1s shell has dived into the negative continuum; the 2p shell is expected to join around element 185 and the 2s shell around element 245. Experiments have so far not succeeded in detecting spontaneous pair creation from assembling supercritical charges through the collision of heavy nuclei (e.g. colliding lead with uranium to momentarily give an effective "Z" of 174; uranium with uranium gives effective "Z" = 184 and uranium with californium gives effective "Z" = 190).


title: Extended periodic table

text: Even if passing "Z" is not an issue, the increasing concentration of the 1s density close to the nucleus would likely make these electrons more vulnerable to "K" electron capture as "Z" is approached. For such heavy elements, these 1s electrons would likely spend a significant fraction of time so close to the nucleus that they are actually inside it. This may pose another limit to the periodic table.


title: Extended periodic table

text: It has also been posited that in the region beyond "A" > 300, an entire "continent of stability" consisting of a hypothetical phase of stable quark matter, comprising freely flowing up and down quarks rather than quarks bound into protons and neutrons, may exist. Such a form of matter is theorized to be a ground state of baryonic matter with a greater binding energy per baryon than nuclear matter, favoring the decay of nuclear matter beyond this mass threshold into quark matter. If this state of matter exists, it could possibly be synthesized in the same fusion reactions leading to normal superheavy nuclei, and would be stabilized against fission as a consequence of its stronger binding that is enough to overcome Coulomb repulsion.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Recent calculations suggest stability of up-down quark matter (udQM) nuggets against conventional nuclei beyond "A" ~ 266, and also show that udQM nuggets become supercritical earlier ("Z" ~ 163, "A" ~ 609) than conventional nuclei ("Z" ~ 177, "A" ~ 480).


title: Extended periodic table

text: The stability of nuclei decreases greatly with the increase in atomic number after curium, element 96, so that all isotopes with an atomic number above 101 decay radioactively with a half-life under a day. No elements with atomic numbers above 82 (after lead) have stable isotopes. Nevertheless, because of reasons not very well understood yet, there is a slight increased nuclear stability around atomic numbers 110–114, which leads to the appearance of what is known in nuclear physics as the "island of stability". This concept, proposed by University of California professor Glenn Seaborg, explains why superheavy elements last longer than predicted.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Calculations according to the Hartree–Fock–Bogoliubov method using the non-relativistic Skyrme interaction have proposed "Z" = 126 as a closed proton shell. In this region of the periodic table, "N" = 184, "N" = 196, and "N" = 228 have been suggested as closed neutron shells. Therefore, the isotopes of most interest are 126, 126, and 126, for these might be considerably longer-lived than other isotopes. Element 126, having a magic number of protons, is predicted to be more stable than other elements in this region, and may have nuclear isomers with very long half-lives. It is also possible that the island of stability is instead centered at 122, which may be spherical and doubly magic.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Taking nuclear deformation and relativistic effects into account, an analysis of single-particle levels predicts new magic numbers for superheavy nuclei at "Z" = 126, 138, 154, and 164 and "N" = 228, 308, and 318. Therefore, in addition to the island of stability centered at Cn, Cn, and Fl, further islands of stability may exist around the doubly magic 126 as well as 164 or 164. These nuclei are predicted to be beta-stable and decay by alpha emission or spontaneous fission with relatively long half-lives, and confer additional stability on neighboring "N" = 228 isotones and elements 152–168, respectively. On the other hand, the same analysis suggests that proton shell closures may be relatively weak or even nonexistent in some cases such as 126, meaning that such nuclei might not be doubly magic and stability will instead be primarily determined by strong neutron shell closures. Additionally, due to the enormously greater forces of electromagnetic repulsion that must be overcome by the strong force at the second island ("Z" = 164), it is possible that nuclei around this region only exist as resonances and cannot stay together for a meaningful amount of time. It is also possible that some of the superactinides between these series may not actually exist because they are too far from both islands, in which case the periodic table might end around "Z" = 130.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Beyond element 164, the fissility line defining the limit of stability with respect to spontaneous fission may converge with the neutron drip line, posing a limit to the existence of heavier elements. Nevertheless, further magic numbers have been predicted at "Z" = 210, 274, and 354 and "N" = 308, 406, 524, 644, and 772, with two beta-stable doubly magic nuclei found at 210 and 274; the same calculation method reproduced the predictions for Fl and 164. (The doubly magic nuclei predicted for "Z" = 354 are beta-unstable, with 354 being neutron-deficient and 354 being neutron-rich.) Although additional stability toward alpha decay and fission are predicted for 210 and 274, with half-lives up to hundreds of microseconds for 210, there will not exist islands of stability as significant as those predicted at "Z" = 114 and 164. As the existence of superheavy elements is very strongly dependent on stabilizing effects from closed shells, nuclear instability and fission will likely determine the end of the periodic table beyond these islands of stability.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) defines an element to exist if its lifetime is longer than 10 seconds, which is the time it takes for the nucleus to form an electron cloud. However, a nuclide is generally considered to exist if its lifetime is longer than about 10 seconds, which is the time it takes for nuclear structure to form. Consequently it is possible that some "Z" values can only be realised in nuclides and that the corresponding elements do not exist.


title: Extended periodic table

text: It is also possible that no further islands actually exist beyond 126, as the nuclear shell structure gets smeared out (as the electron shell structure already is expected to be around oganesson) and low-energy decay modes become readily available.


title: Extended periodic table

text: As the main island of stability is thought to lie around Cn and Cn, undiscovered elements beyond oganesson may be very unstable and undergo alpha decay or spontaneous fission in microseconds or less. The exact region in which half-lives exceed one microsecond is unknown, though various models suggest that isotopes of elements heavier than unbinilium that may be produced in fusion reactions with available targets and projectiles will have half-lives under one microsecond and therefore may not be detected. It is consistently predicted that there will exist regions of stability at "N" = 184 and "N" = 228, and possibly also at "Z" ~ 124 and "N" ~ 198. These nuclei may have half-lives of a few seconds and undergo predominantly alpha decay and spontaneous fission, though minor beta-plus decay (or electron capture) branches may also exist. Outside these regions of enhanced stability, fission barriers are expected to drop significantly due to loss of stabilization effects, resulting in fission half-lives below 10 seconds, especially in even–even nuclei for which hindrance is even lower due to nucleon pairing. In general, alpha decay half-lives are expected to increase with neutron number, from nanoseconds in the most neutron-deficient isotopes to seconds closer to the beta-stability line. For nuclei with only a few neutrons more than a magic number, binding energy substantially drops, resulting in a break in the trend and shorter half-lives. The most neutron deficient isotopes of these elements may also be unbound and undergo proton emission. Cluster decay (heavy particle emission) has also been proposed as an alternative decay mode for some isotopes, posing yet another hurdle to identification of these elements.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The following are expected electron configurations of elements 119–173 and 184. The symbol [Og] indicates the probable electron configuration of oganesson (Z = 118), which is currently the last known element. The configurations of the elements in this table are written starting with [Og] because oganesson is expected to be the last prior element with a closed-shell (inert gas) configuration, 1s 2s 2p 3s 3p 3d 4s 4p 4d 4f 5s 5p 5d 5f 6s 6p 6d 7s 7p. Similarly, the [172] in the configurations for elements 173 and 184 denotes the likely closed-shell configuration of element 172.


title: Extended periodic table

text: Beyond element 123, no complete calculations are available and hence the data in this table must be taken as tentative. In the case of element 123, and perhaps also heavier elements, several possible electron configurations are predicted to have very similar energy levels, such that it is very difficult to predict the ground state. All configurations that have been proposed (since it was understood that the Madelung rule probably stops working here) are included.


title: Extended periodic table

text: The predicted block assignments up to 172 are Kulsha's, following the expected available valence orbitals. There is, however, not a consensus in the literature as to how the blocks should work after element 138.


title: Project Azorian

text: Project Azorian (also called "Jennifer" by the press after its Top Secret Security Compartment) was a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) project to recover the sunken Soviet submarine "K-129" from the Pacific Ocean floor in 1974, using the purpose-built ship "Hughes Glomar Explorer". The 1968 sinking of "K-129" occurred approximately northwest of Hawaii. Project Azorian was one of the most complex, expensive, and secretive intelligence operations of the Cold War at a cost of about $800 million, or $ billion today.


title: Project Azorian

text: In addition to designing the recovery ship and its lifting cradle, the U.S. used concepts developed with Global Marine (see Project Mohole) that utilized their precision stability equipment to keep the ship nearly stationary above the target while lowering nearly of pipe. They worked with scientists to develop methods for preserving paper that had been underwater for years in hopes of being able to recover and read the submarine's codebooks. The reasons this project was undertaken probably included the recovery of an intact R-21 nuclear missile and cryptological documents and equipment.


title: Project Azorian

text: The Soviet Union was unable to locate "K-129", but the US knew where to look. Based on data recorded by four Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC) sites and the Adak Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) array, the US identified an acoustic event on March 8 that likely originated from an explosion aboard the submarine. The US zeroed in on the location to within . The submarine located the boat using the Fish, a towed, , collection of cameras, strobe lights, and sonar that was built to withstand extreme depths. The recovery operation in international waters about six years later used mining for manganese nodules as its cover. The company was nominally owned by Howard Hughes who, secretly backed by the CIA, had paid for the construction of the "Hughes Glomar Explorer". While the ship recovered a portion of "K-129", a mechanical failure in the grapple caused two-thirds of the recovered section to break off during recovery.


title: Project Azorian

text: In April 1968, Soviet Pacific Fleet surface and air assets were observed conducting a surge deployment to the North Pacific Ocean that involved some unusual search operations. The activity was evaluated by the United States Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) as a possible reaction to the loss of a Soviet submarine. Soviet surface ship searches were centered on a location known to be associated with Soviet Golf II-class strategic ballistic missile (SSB) diesel submarine patrol routes. These submarines carried three nuclear missiles in an extended sail/conning tower, and routinely deployed within missile range of the US west coast. After weeks of searching, the Soviets were unable to locate the sunken boat, and Soviet Pacific Fleet operations gradually returned to normal.


title: Project Azorian

text: The American SOSUS hydrophone network in the northern Pacific was tasked with reviewing its recordings in the hope of detecting an implosion (or explosion) related to such a loss. The Navy analyzed acoustic data from four AFTAC sites and the Adak, Alaska SOSUS array, locating the wreck of the submarine to within 5 nautical miles. The site was hundreds of miles away from the Soviet Navy search area.


title: Project Azorian

text: Naval Facility (NAVFAC) Point Sur, south of Monterey, California, was able to isolate a sonic signature on its low-frequency array recordings of an implosion event that had occurred on March 8, 1968. Using NavFac Point Sur's date and time of the event, NavFac Adak and the US West Coast NAVFAC were also able to isolate the acoustic event. With five SOSUS lines-of-bearing, Naval Intelligence was able to localize the site of the "K-129" wreck to the vicinity of 40.1° N latitude and 179.9° E longitude (close to the International Date Line).


title: Project Azorian

text: In July 1968, the United States Navy initiated "Operation Sand Dollar" with the deployment of from Pearl Harbor to the wreck site. Sand Dollar's objective was to find and photograph "K-129". In 1965 "Halibut", which had been configured to use deep submergence search equipment, was the only such specially-equipped submarine then in US inventory. "Halibut" located the wreck after three weeks of visual search using robotic remote-controlled cameras. (It took almost five months of search to find the wreck of the US nuclear-powered submarine in the Atlantic, also in 1968). "Halibut" is reported to have spent the next several weeks taking over 20,000 closeup photos of every aspect of the "K-129" wreck, a feat for which "Halibut" received a special classified Presidential Unit Citation signed by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968.


title: Project Azorian

text: In 1970, based upon this photography, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and Henry Kissinger, then National Security Advisor, proposed a clandestine plan to recover the wreckage so that the US could study Soviet nuclear missile technology, as well as possibly recover cryptographic materials. The proposal was accepted by President Richard Nixon and the CIA was tasked to attempt the recovery.


title: Project Azorian

text: Global Marine Development Inc., the research and development arm of Global Marine Inc., a pioneer in deepwater offshore drilling operations, was contracted to design, build and operate "Hughes Glomar Explorer" to secretly salvage the sunken Soviet submarine. The ship was built at the Sun Shipbuilding yard near Philadelphia. Billionaire businessman Howard Hughes – whose companies were already contractors on numerous classified US military weapons, aircraft and satellite contracts – agreed to lend his name to the project to support the cover story that the ship was mining manganese nodules from the ocean floor, but Hughes and his companies had no actual involvement in the project. "K-129" was photographed at a depth of over , and thus the salvage operation would be well beyond the depth of any ship salvage operation ever attempted. On November 1, 1972, work began on the , "Hughes Glomar Explorer" (HGE).


title: Project Azorian

text: "Hughes Glomar Explorer" employed a large mechanical claw, which Lockheed officially titled the "Capture Vehicle" but affectionately called "Clementine". The capture vehicle was designed to be lowered to the ocean floor, grasp the targeted submarine section, and then lift that section into the ship's hold. One requirement of this technology was to keep the floating base stable and in position over a fixed point below the ocean surface.


title: Project Azorian

text: The capture vehicle was lowered and raised on a pipe string similar to those used on oil drilling rigs. Section by section, pairs of steel pipes were strung together to lower the claw through a hole in the middle of the ship. This configuration was designed by Western Gear Corp. of Everett, Washington. Upon a successful capture by the claw, the lift reversed the process – pairs drawn up and removed one at a time. The salvaged "Target Object" was thus to be drawn into a moon pool, the doors of which could then be closed to form a floor for the salvaged section. This allowed for the entire salvage process to take place underwater, away from the view of other ships, aircraft, or spy satellites.


title: Project Azorian

text: Sailing from Long Beach, California, on June 20, 1974, "Hughes Glomar Explorer" arrived at the recovery site July 4 and conducted salvage operations for over a month. During this period, at least two Soviet Navy ships visited "Hughes Glomar Explorer"s work site, the oceangoing tugboat "SB-10", and the Soviet missile range instrumentation ship "Chazma". It was found out after 1991 that the Soviets were tipped off about the operation and were aware that the CIA was planning some kind of salvage operation, but the military command believed it impossible that they could perform such a task and disregarded further intelligence warnings. Later, Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin started sending urgent messages back to the Soviet Navy warning that an operation was imminent. Soviet military engineering experts reevaluated their positions and claimed that it was indeed possible (though highly unlikely) to recover "K-129", and ships in the area were ordered to report any unusual activity, although the lack of knowledge as to where "K-129" was located impeded their ability to stop any salvage operation.


title: Project Azorian

text: US Army Major General Roland Lajoie stated that, according to a briefing he received by the CIA during recovery operations, "Clementine" suffered a catastrophic failure, causing two-thirds of the already raised portion of "K-129" to sink back to the ocean floor. Former Lockheed and Hughes Global Marine employees who worked on the operation have stated that several of the "claws" intended to grab the submarine fractured, possibly because they were manufactured from maraging steel, which is very strong, but not very ductile compared with other kinds of steel.


title: Project Azorian

text: The recovered section included two nuclear torpedoes, and thus Project Azorian was not a complete failure. The bodies of six crewmen were also recovered, and were given a memorial service and with military honors, buried at sea in a metal casket because of radioactivity concerns. Other crew members have reported that code books and other materials of apparent interest to CIA employees aboard the vessel were recovered, and images of inventory printouts exhibited in the documentary suggest that various submarine components, such as hatch covers, instruments and sonar equipment were also recovered. White's documentary also states that the ship's bell from "K-129" was recovered, and was subsequently returned to the Soviet Union as part of a diplomatic effort. The CIA considered the project one of the greatest intelligence coups of the Cold War.


title: Project Azorian

text: The entire salvage operation was recorded by a CIA documentary film crew, but this film remains classified. A short portion of the film, showing the recovery and subsequent burial at sea of the six bodies recovered in the forward section of "K-129", was given to the Russian government in 1992.


title: Project Azorian

text: "Time Magazine" credited Jack Anderson as breaking the story in a March 1975 radio broadcast. Rejecting a plea from the Director of Central Intelligence William Colby to suppress the story, Anderson said he released the story because "Navy experts have told us that the sunken sub contains no real secrets and that the project, therefore, is a waste of the taxpayers' money."


title: Project Azorian

text: In February 1975, investigative reporter and former "New York Times" writer Seymour Hersh had planned to publish a story on Project Azorian. Bill Kovach, the "New York Times" Washington bureau chief at the time, said in 2005 that the government offered a convincing argument to delay publication – exposure at that time, while the project was ongoing, "would have caused an international incident." "The New York Times" published its account in March 1975, after a story appeared in the "Los Angeles Times", and included a five-paragraph explanation of the many twists and turns in the path to publication. CIA director George H. W. Bush reported on several occasions to U.S. president Gerald Ford on media reports and the future use of the ship. The CIA concluded that it seemed unclear what, if any, action was taken by the Soviet Union after learning of the story.


title: Project Azorian

text: After stories had been published about the CIA's attempts to stop publication of information about Project Azorian, Harriet Ann Phillippi, a journalist, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the CIA for any records about the CIA's attempts. The CIA refused to either confirm or deny the existence of such documents. This type of non-responsive reply has since come to be known as the "Glomar response" or "Glomarization".


title: Project Azorian

text: A video showing the 1974 memorial services for the six Soviet seamen whose bodies were recovered by Project Azorian was forwarded by the U.S. to Russia in the early 1990s. Portions of this video were shown on television documentaries concerning Project Azorian, including a 1998 Discovery Channel special called "A Matter of National Security" (based on Clyde W. Burleson's book, "The Jennifer Project" (1977)) and again in 1999, on a PBS Cold War submarine episode of "NOVA".


title: Project Azorian

text: In February 2010, the CIA released an article from the fall 1985 edition of the CIA internal journal "Studies in Intelligence" following an application by researcher Matthew Aid at the National Security Archive to declassify the information under the Freedom of Information Act. Exactly what the operation managed to salvage remained unclear. The report was written by an unidentified participant in Project Azorian.


title: Project Azorian

text: During the aftermath of the publication of the "Project Jennifer" story by Seymour Hersh, U.S. President Gerald Ford, Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger, Philip Buchen (Counsel to the President), John O. Marsh, Jr. (Counselor to the President), Ambassador Donald Rumsfeld, USAF Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft (Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs), and William Colby (Director of Central Intelligence) discussed the leak and whether the Ford administration would react to Hersh's story. In a cabinet meeting on March 19, 1975 (the same day "The New York Times" published the story), Secretary of Defense Schlesinger is quoted as saying,


title: Project Azorian

text: With the words "marvel" and "major American accomplishment" used to describe Operation Matador, the Secretary of Defense indicated at least some form of success that should be confirmed publicly. The director of CIA, William Colby dissented, recalling the U-2 crisis, saying:


title: Project Azorian

text: The result of the meeting was to stonewall, causing the "Los Angeles Times" to publish a 4-page story the next day by Jack Nelson with the headline, "Administration Won't Talk About Sub Raised by CIA."


title: Project Azorian

text: "Time" magazine as well as a court filing by Felice D. Cohen and Morton H. Halperin on behalf of the Military Audit Project suggest that the alleged project goal of raising a Soviet submarine might itself have been a cover story for another secret mission. Tapping of undersea communication cables (which actually did happen in the unrelated Operation Ivy Bells), the cover up of an assassination, the installation of an underwater equivalent of a missile silo, and installation and repair of surveillance systems to monitor ship and submarine movements are listed as possibilities for the actual purpose of such a secret mission.


title: Project Azorian

text: W. Craig Reed, in the 2010 book "Red November: Inside the Secret U.S. – Soviet Submarine War" (2010), tells an inside account of Project Azorian provided by Joe Houston, the senior engineer who designed leading-edge camera systems used by the "Hughes Glomar Explorer" team to photograph "K-129" on the ocean floor. The team needed pictures that offered precise measurements to design the grappling arm and other systems used to bring the sunken submarine up from the bottom. Houston worked for the mysterious "Mr. P" (John Parangosky) who worked for CIA Deputy Director Carl E. Duckett – the two leaders of Project Azorian. Duckett later worked with Houston at another company, and intimated that the CIA may have recovered much more from the "K-129" than admitted to publicly. Reed also details how the deep submergence towed sonar array technology used by the submarine "Halibut" to find "K-129" was used for subsequent Operation Ivy Bells missions to wiretap underwater Soviet communications cables.


title: Project Azorian

text: In a documentary film titled "Azorian: The Raising Of The K-129", which was produced by Michael White and released in 2009, three principals who participated in the design of the "Hughes Glomar Explorer" heavy lift system and the Lockheed capture vehicle (CV or claw) gave on-camera interviews. These individuals were also on board the ship during the mission and were intimately involved with the recovery operation. They are Sherman Wetmore, Global Marine heavy lift operations manager; Charlie Johnson, Global Marine heavy lift engineer; and Raymond Feldman, Lockheed Ocean Systems senior staff engineer. These three, plus others who were not on board during the recovery but were cleared on all aspects of the mission, confirmed that only of the bow was eventually recovered. The intent was to recover the forward two thirds () of "K-129", which had broken off from the rear section of the submarine and was designated the Target Object (TO). The capture vehicle successfully lifted the TO from the ocean floor. On the way up, a failure of part of the capture vehicle caused the loss of , including the sail, of the TO. In October 2010, a book based on the film, "Project Azorian: The CIA And The Raising of the K-129" by Norman Polmar and Michael White, was published. The book contains additional documentary evidence about the effort to locate the submarine and the recovery operation.


title: Greg Morris

text: Francis Gregory Alan Morris (September 27, 1933 – August 27, 1996) was an American actor. He was best known for portraying Barney Collier on "" and Lt. David Nelson on "Vega$".


title: Greg Morris

text: Born in Cleveland, Ohio, to jazz trumpeter Francis Williams, Morris served in the United States Army during the Korean War.


title: Greg Morris

text: While in college at Iowa on the G.I. Bill, Morris was active in college theater and hosted the late afternoon Jazz radio show, "Tea-Time", on the University of Iowa station, WSUI. He co-produced concerts at the university with a student friend.


title: Greg Morris

text: Morris began his television acting career in the 1960s, making guest appearances on numerous TV shows such as Alfred Hitchcock Hour, "The Twilight Zone", "Branded" and "Ben Casey". In 1966, Morris was cast in his most recognizable role as the team electronics expert Barney Collier in the TV series "". Morris, Peter Lupus, and Bob Johnson were the only actors to remain with Mission Impossible throughout its entire run.


title: Greg Morris

text: After Iowa, Greg's first professional stage role was in "The Death of Bessie Smith". One of his earliest television roles was a cameo appearance on "The Dick Van Dyke Show" in the episode "That's My Boy?", where Rob becomes convinced that they have taken home the wrong baby from the hospital. The revelation of Morris' character as the other child's father prompted a record setting bout of laughter from the studio audience. He also appeared in the 1963–64 season of ABC's drama about college life, "Channing", starring Jason Evers and Henry Jones.


title: Greg Morris

text: After "Mission: Impossible" was cancelled, Morris appeared in several movies and made guest TV appearances, including "The Six Million Dollar Man" (Episode 1-05, "Little Orphan Airplane", 1974). Morris was then cast as Lt. David Nelson of the Las Vegas Metro Police in the ABC TV detective series "Vega$" (1978–1981), co-starring Robert Urich, Bart Braverman, and Phyllis Davis. On March 3, 1981, by which point most filming for the season had concluded, Morris was involved in a serious car accident on I-15 near Las Vegas.


title: Greg Morris

text: After the cancellation of "Vega$", Morris continued to make guest TV appearances, including several episodes in the short-lived 1988–1990 remake of the "Mission: Impossible" TV series, starring his son Phil Morris. Phil Morris was cast as Grant Collier, the son of Barney. Morris also appeared in two episodes of the TV series "What's Happening!!" as Lawrence Nelson (father of Dwayne) and in three episodes of "The Jeffersons", in which he reprised his role as an electronics expert (although not as Barney Collier) in a comparison sequel of the "Mission: Impossible" series. Morris was also a frequent guest star on "Password", "Tattletales", and "Password Plus" in the 1960s and 1970s.


title: Greg Morris

text: Shortly before his death in 1996, Morris saw the film version of "" starring Tom Cruise. He so disliked the movie (as did some of his former co-stars) that he left the theater early, calling it "an abomination".


title: Greg Morris

text: Morris married his wife Leona Keyes in 1956, and remained married until his death. Together they had three children, including actor Phil Morris and actress Iona Morris. Leona Morris died on November 2, 2016, aged 81.


title: Greg Morris

text: Morris died on August 27, 1996 of lung cancer and a brain tumor in Las Vegas, Nevada at the age of 62.


title: Sam Bottoms

text: Bottoms was born in Santa Barbara, California, the third son of James "Bud" Bottoms (a sculptor and art teacher) and Betty (Chapman), both of whom survive him. He was the brother of actors Timothy Bottoms (born 1951), Joseph Bottoms (born 1954) and Ben Bottoms (born 1960).


title: Sam Bottoms

text: When Bottoms was 16 years old, he was on the set of "The Last Picture Show", in which his older brother Timothy starred, when the director Peter Bogdanovich decided to give him a screen test. He ended up in the movie as the character of Billy, who has no spoken lines but plays a pivotal role in the drama. Five years later, Bottoms appeared with Clint Eastwood in "The Outlaw Josey Wales".


title: Sam Bottoms

text: Bottoms may be best remembered for his role as surfer Lance B. Johnson, a Navy Gunner's Mate stationed on a river boat in Francis Ford Coppola's 20th century opus, "Apocalypse Now". Bottoms acquired "hookworm" during the chaotic production in the Philippines, and the parasite "wrecked his liver".


title: Sam Bottoms

text: At age 53, Bottoms died of glioblastoma multiforme, a type of brain tumor, on December 16, 2008. He was cremated and his ashes given to his widow.


title: Rabbinic Judaism

text: Rabbinic Judaism (), also called Rabbinism, Rabbinicism, or Judaism espoused by the Rabbanites, has been the mainstream form of Judaism since the 6th century CE, after the codification of the Babylonian Talmud. Rabbinic Judaism has its roots in Pharisaic Judaism and is based on the belief that Moses at Mount Sinai received both the Written Torah ("Torah she-be-Khetav") and the Oral Torah ("Torah she-be-al Peh") from God. The Oral Torah, transmitted orally, explains the Written Torah. At first, it was forbidden to write down the Oral Torah because the rabbis feared that it would become rigid and lose its flexibility, but after the destruction of the Second Temple they decided to write it down in the Talmud and other rabbinic texts.


title: Rabbinic Judaism

text: Rabbinic Judaism contrasts with the Sadducees, Karaite Judaism and Samaritanism, which do not recognize the Oral Torah as a divine authority nor the rabbinic procedures used to interpret Jewish scripture. Although there are now profound differences among Jewish denominations of Rabbinic Judaism with respect to the binding force of "halakha" (Jewish religious law) and the willingness to challenge preceding interpretations, all identify themselves as coming from the tradition of the Oral Law and the rabbinic method of analysis.


title: Rabbinic Judaism

text: In 332 BCE the Persians were defeated by Alexander the Great. After his demise, and the division of Alexander's empire among his generals, the Seleucid Kingdom was formed. During this time currents of Judaism were influenced by Hellenistic philosophy developed from the 3rd century BCE, notably among the Jewish diaspora in Alexandria, culminating in the compilation of the Septuagint. An important advocate of the symbiosis of Jewish theology and Hellenistic thought is Philo.


title: Rabbinic Judaism

text: Hellenistic culture had a profound impact on the customs and practices of Jews, both in Judea and in the diaspora. These inroads into Judaism gave rise to Hellenistic Judaism in the Jewish diaspora which sought to establish a Hebraic-Jewish religious tradition within the culture and language of Hellenism.


title: Rabbinic Judaism

text: There was a general deterioration in relations between Hellenized Jews and other Jews, leading the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes to ban certain Jewish religious rites and traditions. Consequently, the Jews who rejected Hellenism revolted against the Greek ruler leading to the formation of an independent Jewish kingdom, known as the Hasmonean dynasty, which lasted from 165 BCE to 63 BCE. The Hasmonean dynasty eventually disintegrated in a civil war. The people, who did not want to continue to be governed by a Hellenized dynasty, appealed to Rome for intervention, leading to a total Roman conquest and annexation of the country, see Iudaea province.


title: Rabbinic Judaism

text: Nevertheless, the cultural issues remained unresolved. The main issue separating the Hellenistic and other Jews was the application of biblical laws in a Hellenistic (melting pot) culture.


title: Rabbinic Judaism

text: Hellenistic Judaism spread to Ptolemaic Egypt from the 3rd century BCE, and became a notable "religio licita" throughout the Roman Empire, until its decline in the 3rd century concurrent with the rise of Gnosticism and Early Christianity.


title: Rabbinic Judaism

text: The decline of Hellenistic Judaism is obscure. It may be that it was marginalized by, absorbed into or became Early Christianity (see the Gospel according to the Hebrews). The Acts of the Apostles at least report how Paul the Apostle preferredly evangelized communities of proselytes and Godfearers, or circles sympathetic to Judaism: the Apostolic Decree allowing converts to forgo circumcision made Christianity a more attractive option for interested pagans than Judaism. See also Circumcision controversy in early Christianity. The attractiveness of Christianity may, however, have suffered a setback with its being explicitly outlawed in the 80s CE by Domitian as a "Jewish superstition", while Judaism retained its privileges as long as members paid the Fiscus Judaicus. However, from a historical perspective, Persecution of Christians seemed only to increase the number of Christian converts, leading eventually to the adoption of Christianity by the Roman emperor Constantine and the subsequent development of the Byzantine Empire.


title: Rabbinic Judaism

text: On the other hand, mainstream Judaism began to reject Hellenistic currents, outlawing use of the Septuagint (see also the Council of Jamnia). Remaining currents of Hellenistic Judaism may have merged into Gnostic movements in the early centuries CE.


title: Rabbinic Judaism

text: In the later part of the Second Temple period (2nd century BCE), the Second Commonwealth of Judea (Hasmonean Kingdom) was established and religious matters were determined by a pair ("zugot") which led the Sanhedrin. The Hasmonean Kingdom ended in 37 BCE but it's believed that the "two-man rule of the Sanhedrin" lasted until the early part of the 1st century CE during the period of the Roman province of Judea. The last pair, Hillel and Shammai, was the most influential of the Sanhedrin "zugot". Both were Pharisees, but the Sadducees were actually the dominant party while the Temple stood. Since the Sadducees did not survive the First Jewish–Roman War, their version of events has perished. In addition, Hillel's views have been seen as superior to Shammai's by Rabbinic Judaism. The development of an oral tradition of teaching called the "tanna" would be the means by which the faith of Judaism would sustain the fall of the Second Temple.


title: Rabbinic Judaism

text: Jewish messianism has its root in the apocalyptic literature of the 2nd to 1st centuries BCE, promising a future "anointed" leader or Messiah to resurrect the Israelite "Kingdom of God", in place of the foreign rulers of the time. This corresponded with the Maccabean Revolt directed against the Seleucids. Following the fall of the Hasmonean kingdom, it was directed against the Roman administration of Iudaea Province, which, according to Josephus, began with the formation of the Zealots during the Census of Quirinius of 6 CE, although full scale open revolt did not occur till the First Jewish–Roman War in 66 CE. Historian H. H. Ben-Sasson has proposed that the "Crisis under Caligula" (37–41) was the "first open break" between Rome and the Jews even though tension already existed during the census in 6 CE and under Sejanus (before 31 CE).


title: Rabbinic Judaism

text: Rabbinic tradition holds that the details and interpretation of the Torah (Written Law), which are called the Oral Torah or Oral Law, were originally an unwritten tradition based upon the Law given to Moses on Mount Sinai. All the laws in the Written Torah are recorded only as part of a narrative describing God imparting these laws to Moses and commanding him to transmit them to the Jewish nation.


title: Rabbinic Judaism

text: However, as the persecutions of the Jews increased and the details were in danger of being forgotten, these oral laws were recorded by rabbi Judah ha-Nasi ("Judah the Prince") in the Mishnah, redacted . The Talmud was a compilation of both the Mishnah and the Gemara, rabbinic commentaries redacted over the next three centuries. The Gemara originated in two major centers of Jewish scholarship, Palestine and Babylonia. Correspondingly, two bodies of analysis developed, and two works of Talmud were created. The older compilation is called the Jerusalem Talmud. It was compiled sometime during the 4th century in Palestine.


title: Rabbinic Judaism

text: Judaism at this time was divided into antagonistic factions. The main camps were the Pharisees, Saducees, and Zealots, but also included other less influential sects. This led to further unrest, and the 1st century BCE and 1st century CE saw a number of charismatic religious leaders, contributing to what would become the Mishnah of Rabbinic Judaism, including Yochanan ben Zakai and Hanina Ben Dosa.