Nucleonics Matrix

Nuclear Stability

By Alain Lareau

Chapter 1 Page 5

Oxygen-16 the third most plentiful nuclide


The Language of the Nucleus, on-line edition.
The world's largest nuclear glossary.


n = p-2 n = p-1 n = p n = p+1 n = p+2
  H 001
99.985%

Stable
   n  
    H 002
0.015%

Stable
    
  He 003
0.000137%

Stable
   H 003

12.33 yr
  
Li 004

   He 004
99.999863%

Stable
   H 004


All Isobars to six
H-1
H-2
He-3


 H-3
Li-4


 He-4


 H-4
Li-5


 He-5
Be-6


 Li-6


 He-6
Above and at left you find four varient charts in HTML format. Nuclide identities displayed in this fashion comprise The Incremental Table of Atomic Isobars.



-4 -3 -2 -1 n=p +1 +2 +3 +4
H-1
H-2
He-3 H-3
Li-4 He-4 H-4
Li-5 He-5
Be-6 Li-6 He-6
B-7 Be-7 Li-7 He-7
C-8 B-8 Be-8 Li-8 He-8
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
Cube

Octahedral Equation

Icosahedral Equation

Our discussion left off examining the isobar-8 so we pick up on isobar-9 which does have a stable nuclide.


n =
p-2 p-1p p+1p+2
  H 1   n  
   H 2   
  He 3   H 3  
   He 4   
       
   Li 6   
     Li 7  
       
     Be 9  
   B 10   
     B 11  
   C 12   
     C 13  
   N 14   
     N 15  
   O 16   
We still have the issue of the cube at hand but the rolly/floppy trait is mitagated, again by the addition of a central nucleon as was the case with isobar-7. Hence Be-9 is the only stable isotope of Beryllium.
All this makes much sence in terms of both close packing and spherical division. If I were to have you guess which isotope of Boron is the most common B-10 or B-11 what information would you use to guide your choice.
Observe to your left, the nuclides Li-7, Be-9, and B-11 are marked off with orange, this denotes them as
Most Common Isotope.
The yellow is used to mark off the nuclides as SUPER Stable for the six most abundant elements. I consider these six isobars as durable beyond stable and favored by nature. The forth most plentiful element is Neon, we will add that now. the fifth and sixth are already on the the chart, Carbon and Nitrogen. we will observe what paterns arise and begin our discusion anew.


My interest in the geometry of the atomic nucleus first developed after reading an article by Laurence Hecht. I adopted the viewpoint that the insinuation of the article was a worthwhile line of inquiry. The idea of using the Platonic solids to make sense of atomic ontology intrigued me. The Moon-Hecht model sets protons at the vertices of successive frames corresponding to Platonic solids. Elements that matched completed proton shells were recognized as abundant elements such as iron, silicon and oxygen as I knew from geological studies to be main constituents of the earth's crust. Might it be easy to see why a geologist like myself would find the Moon-Hecht model interesting.



Here is a link to the Moon-Hecht Model at 21st. Century Science and Technology magazine should you wish to view it on your own.
Now as to the abundance and distribution of the elements in the cosmos see page 69 of this PDF file.
http://ie.lbl.gov/toipdf/toi263.pdf

Somewhere I ran across a list of the most common elements in the cosmos. I then learned that neon, fourth on the list, was more plentiful than both iron and silicon and is abundant in interstellar space. I knew something was amiss. The Moon-Hecht model does not mark off neon with a completed proton shell and gives no explanation for abundant neon. This idea sat still for a few years!

``White Paper'' on the US X-Ray Astronomy Program

Stars produce helium from hydrogen and if they have enough mass they begin to burn helium to heavier elements though what is called the C-N-O process. What element would a star produce if it were massive enough to burn oxygen? Yes neon! This nagged at me so I discarded the proton at the vertex notion and played around with the idea of a system of shells but discounted any distinction between protons and neutrons and with each of the eleven most common elements of the cosmos the atomic weight values were found to be additions of platonic numbers ie. 4, 6, 8, 12, and 20. The idea sat for a few more years as the notion of "stability by degree had not fully come upon me.

STARS

Looking at chart from the Moon-Hecht model you will see nothing special about Neon, that is Neon is conspicuously not marked off with the coincidence of a completed proton shell.
That's the fly in the ointment. To begin with I am told that there is a set of elements that nature favors in occurrence in the universe. Let us suspend our notions of how that distribution came to be, for a time, so as not to restrict our thinking. We list below the first six in order of abundance. Nitrogen and Carbon seem to be a close tie, I myself beleive Carbon to be more abundant.

  • Hydrogen
  • Helium
  • Oxygen
  • Neon
  • Carbon
  • Nitrogen
See Neon --- --- Next




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