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u/StarMoonSparkles
9h ago
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https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/us/clarice-phelps-tennessine-element-117-scn-ctpr
This is news from 2023. But, it’s important to say that the original plaque left her name off. So I’m glad she is getting credit for her work.
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u/ConnectionRoyal2213 9h ago
Yea and not invited to the gala event. !!
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u/ItchyEducation 3h ago
Forgotten scientist* Doesn't matter if you have balls or a vagina in their industry, if you're not well known already you're never getting recognition, regardless of gender or skin color + she herself finds it diminutive when people adress her that way, she'd rather been seen as a scientist
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u/Annual-Freedom2136 9h ago
How the hell did they leave her name off the plaque if she invented it or found it
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u/tr_9422 9h ago
It's not the kind of thing you discover on your own in a stroke of brilliance with a lab in your garage, nuclear physics happens with teams of multiple researchers from many institutions with bazillions of dollars of large equipment (like nuclear reactors and particle accelerators). Being recognized as part of the team is a big deal, but phrasing it like "she discovered it" is just as much forgetting to credit a lot of other people.
Wikipedia's info box for element 117 lists discoverers as Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Russia), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (California), Vanderbilt University (Tennessee) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Tennessee)
But then in the article it lists even more "eventual collaborating institutions": University of Tennessee (Knoxville), The Research Institute for Advanced Reactors (Russia), and The University of Nevada (Las Vegas).
There's a whole lot of people who deserve credit for their involvement in a discovery like this, Clarice Phelps among them.
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u/Allegorist 9h ago •
"Discover" is also a very strong word. There aren't random elements missing, we are just stacking extra protons and neutrons on to the upper end. They are essentially all elements that we have known existed for decades, just nobody took the time, money, and effort to smash the right things together to make it. Or rather, the difficult part is often verifying that you have actually made any of it since they are generally very short lived.
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u/cheapdrinks 8h ago
Hoping the island of stability is real and we eventually get some crazy new shit at some point!
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u/kantbemyself 9h ago
Modern physics papers broke the publishing page layout. The “Authors” section pushes the abstract to page 2 half the time.
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u/SlayerSFaith 9h ago
Yea I was about to say, isn't it less about discovering it and more about doing all the engineering to synthesize it? Cuz like, is it really discovering if everybody knows it exists, theoretically?
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u/SeenYourScene 9h ago
I understand why, but I find it oddly funny that you () US states, cities, and the entire country of Russia.
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u/Aritche 8h ago
From the linked article.
"When her lab celebrated tennessine, Phelps was left off the gala’s guest list; when her supervisor got her in, no place card bore her name, she said. Even the plaque listing scientists involved in the discovery omitted her.
“They had left me off this whole thing,” Phelps said. “I felt embarrassed because everyone is wandering around this luncheon, and I literally didn’t have a seat at the table. I went outside, and I was crying.”
Phelps later was told her name had been cut off by mistake following a spreadsheets’ line break, she said.
Phelps’ “name was inadvertently omitted from a plaque dedicated to (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) staff credited with the discovery of tennessine, an error we quickly corrected,” the institution told CNN. The lab “is incredibly proud of Clarice Phelps – a US Navy veteran, a prolific scientist, an active member of the East Tennessee community."
Obviously up to you on if you think it was a mistake or not.
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u/Banes_Addiction 8h ago
I've been a scientist on these kinds of large projects for 15 years, and this kind of thing does just happen. These things have a tonne of flux - people moving in and out, getting new jobs, changing projects etc etc. The whole thing usually goes through a tonne of stages done by people who have no direct, personal knowledge of who did what and when. So we have a set of fairly simple, arbitrary rules about who gets included automatically and then a wide window to appeal getting credit if you think you should have but didn't. It is, ultimately, the person who wants the credit's job to ensure that no mistakes have been made when that happens.
And sometimes grad students just don't know that that is their job, they might not read the email that says "this is the final list of contributors, please appeal to X if you think you should be included".
On top that, she presumably wasn't a grad student at the time, since the discovery was 2010 and it says in 2023 she was working to finish a PhD. If she was working as a technician, techs aren't automatically included in any of our credit, a deal has to be specifically made that either all the techs involved in a specific task get included, or that one person was doing enough of the science work that it should still count.
The whole thing is big, and complicated, and mistakes/omissions get made a lot.
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u/bonyponyride 8h ago •
....an active member of the East Tennessee community.
She is a living human in the place where she lives! They probably could have found a third, more interesting fact about her.
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u/new_math 9h ago
It was found by the Dept of Energy, The University of Tennessee (Knoxville), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, The Research Institute for Advanced Reactors (Russia), and The University of Nevada (Las Vegas), Vanderbilt, and a few other organizations / research groups that most people have never heard of.
It is sad that she was left off and/or her contributions may have been minimized but this was an effort with hundreds of contributors, maybe even thousands if you count indirect support staff and such.
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u/Meowmasterish 8h ago edited 8h ago
Also, that article is from 2023, but the actual synthesis of the element occured in 2010, they didn't officially claim to have discovered it until 2012, the claim wasn't recognized until the end of 2015, and the element wasn't named until 2017.
As for the "first new element in 14 years", I don't know where they got that information from. Four new elements were confirmed at the same time (113, 115, 117, and 118) in December 2015, even though the other three elements were synthesized before 117 (in 2003, 2003, and 2002) and even still, two new elements were recognized in 2011 (114 and 116) which had both been synthesized in 1999 and 2000.
Nothing really equates to 14 years.
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u/sora_mui 4h ago
Came here expecting news of the discovery of element 119, can't say i'm not disappointed....
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u/Noravis5127 8h ago
Yeah, I'm a bit confused. According to her wikipedia page she was on the team at Oak Ridge National Lab (in collaboration with Russia's Joint Institute for Nuclear Research) when they discovered element-117, tennessine in 2009-2010.
And according to this Timeline of chemical element discoveries It (tennessine) is the most recent element discovered; and the one prior (Nihonium) happend in 2003 so even the 14 years is made up.
Can we praise her accomplishements without filling it with misrepresenation:
"Phelps is the first African-American woman involved with the discovery of a chemical element".
https://physicstoday.aip.org/news/the-overlooked-element-makers
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u/trippin-mellon 8h ago
First synthesized in 2010, named in November 2016. This is old news….. but…. This is the first I’m hearing about it!!
So I learned something today!
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u/BenigNeglect 8h ago
No. “Participated in the experimental work supporting confirmation of tennessine” would be accurate. “Discovered” is a misleading shorthand.
She was on the technical team tasked with separating/purifying it.This requires specialized laboratory purification skills. She worked under the direction of the purification lead, Rose Boll.
I’d have to know more about the plaque. But the original discovery of element 117 was published in April 2010. Phelps is not among its 33 and did not contribute until the 2011-2012 confirmation experiments.
I don’t want to take anything away from her. But I’m always skeptical when I hear these types of stories. I’m not sure why. But I often discover it’s not as clear as the sensational headlines imply.
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u/stacecom 7h ago
You're skeptical when you see a picture with superimposed text and absolutely no backing sources?
We must be twins!
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u/ConvincingVoice 8h ago
It’s the same as ‘Hedy Lamarr invented Bluetooth!!” Nobody has the attention span or interest in the long, accurate, boring version of reality that we live in.
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u/ChunkyPickens 7h ago
It’s Hedley you fool!!! 😂😂😂 That film has more one liners than most all other films.
Anyone got a dime? Ooohh shoot! Someone’s gotta go back and get a shit load of dimes.
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u/Despiteful91 4h ago
"X" discovered gigantic breakthrough... You can always assume that there is a massive Team behind any of these discoveries that require Billions worth of research equipment
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u/MelangeBot 5h ago
Also when it comes to these elements there is nothing to discover, all the configurations are already known. How many protons, neutrons, electrons, etc etc. But these elements are not stable so they can't exist in nature because they decay to rapidly. Sometimes we can briefly make them in a lab before they decay again. That's what happened here. Discover make it sound like they found some exotic new material in a meteor that crashed on earth.
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u/throwaway_194js 3h ago
These massive-element-producing experiments are significant, but you're right - the interesting part isn't the element itself, it's the technique used to make it, as it usually represents a step forward in or validation of our understanding of nuclear physics.
The over-focus on the "new" elements themselves is largely a consequence of science being turned into an entertainment commodity, dumbed down for the lowest common denominator.
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u/triplediscount 4h ago
In today’s world no one invents or discovers anything anymore, it’s always teams of scientists.
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u/anubis_xxv 3h ago
Thank you for clarifying.
When I see these headlines as somebody not involved in science, I picture a worn out scientist working alone for years in her lab second guessing her equations until she has a eureka moment and bam! new element! Like Tony Stark inventing Vibranium but with less robot butlers and more late night caffeine.
Instead it seems this team of scientists knew what they were looking for? Am I right? It was already a known element? And this team spent the last few years trying to isolate it, of which this lady was a member of a prominent member.
Very different stories.
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u/Ecstatic_Skill_2523 2h ago
Tony Stark's New Element (Symbol: NE), unofficially known as Badassium, was researched and theorized by Howard Stark, and later synthesized by Tony Stark.
I think you mean Badassium, not vibranium.
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u/Top-Alps-6051 8h ago
She didn't discover it. She was part of the team that did. And this happened 16 years ago
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u/Chessdaddy_ 8h ago
Yea I’m not sure why this is being framed as recent news.
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u/Norgar756 8h ago
Got to keep the race/sex wars going. Can't have the dirty poor teaming up.
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u/identity_concealed
9h ago
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I hope she names it Vibranium.
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u/teetering_bulb_dnd 9h ago edited 9h ago
She did it in 2015. Element is called Tennessine
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u/Agreeable_Day4539 9h ago
Tennessine
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u/Ctowncreek 9h ago
"Tennessine may be located in the "island of stability", a concept that explains why some superheavy elements are more stable despite an overall trend of decreasing stability for elements beyond bismuth on the periodic table. The synthesized tennessine atoms have lasted tens and hundreds of milliseconds." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessine#:~:text=Tennessine%20may%20be,of%20milliseconds.
Lol "island of stability..." "hundreds of milliseconds."
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u/chiuthejerk 4h ago
She didn’t “do it” Please take time to read how these things work.. being on a team of more than 50 people isn’t discovering, she wasn’t even lead on the team. Not discounting her, just being honest about the title which is very misleading..
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u/Gudthrak
4h ago
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My Chemistry teacher laughed in my face when I asked him if there would every be anything added to the table when they discovered things in the universe. I tried to explain multiple times about how I meant in the future and with an infinite universe etc etc.
He kept shutting me down basically claiming it was a closed system and everything was discovered.
That was in 2008 or so, I believe there's been multiple additions to the table since.
He later went to work for our national planetarium, idk why you'd do that with a closed mind.
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u/Alana_Piranha 3h ago •
That's like the patent guy who claimed everything that could possibly be invented has already been achieved...In 1899
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u/darksidemags 3h ago
In 2003 an instructor in the book and magazine publishing program I was taking laughed at me when I asked a question about new digital technology being a threat to traditional publishing.
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u/Spiritual_Bridge84 2h ago
Someone once told me that all the good songs that could ever be written, are already written.
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u/dedokta 2h ago
At this point they don't really discover new elements, they force them to exist for a millisecond or two and then they name it. New star systems are not going to reveal anything we don't know about and elements above the ones we have are not really viable outside of a lab.
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u/Gudthrak 1h ago
I learned this today from yours and other comments. While not knowing for over 20 years while I had more than 3 years of chemistry and a passing grade. Madness.
My question originated from the table not being complete on purpose, it was never explained to me that there are in fact blank spaces that will get a name some day. That the reason it was like that was because of the protons.
I can't imagine that wasn't what I was supposed to know, but that questions clearly showed I had misunderstood the theory, or he had not completely explained it.So my question was right in asking (because I understood it wrong), but he should've explained to me that my idea of what the periodic table is, was wrong, and as many here have explained it to me in a few sentences, he should've been able to as well.
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u/kevinsmomdeborah 1h ago
When Mendeleev created the periodic table, it was missing a lot of blocks, it predicted new elements or at least left space for them. It sad a chemistry teacher didn't know this, as it's basic information.
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u/5notboogie 1h ago
There are teachers in the us that are creationists. I mean...
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u/kevinsmomdeborah 47m ago
True. I had creationist teachers. I had to learn my science on my own time. My chemistry teacher taught us about the firmament around the earth 🙄, but he never told us that heavier elements were impossible to discover.
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u/thegreedyturtle 1h ago •
We discover new elements by producing them in a lab, they're already on the periodic table.
Your chem teacher is an asshole for not describing what they probably had in their head: each element is just one proton more than the last. So we don't add anything to the table itself, we just prove that another element can actually exist in reality.
So the table is set- it's just a list that goes on forever.
At least in your ahole chem teachers head. There's much more nuance than just a statement like that.
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u/ComputerInevitable20 2h ago
The beauty of science is that new discoveries will always happen but only to those with curious minds. Your chemistry teacher is a terrible teacher for shutting down students’ curiosity.
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u/Gudthrak 2h ago
I agree. I try to do the opposite with my son, keep his hungry mind curious by feeding his questions about anything, and searching for answers if I don't know them. To teach him to never be satisfied with an 'I don't know'.
Now if he starts asking a lot of questions before bedtime, that's the only time I'll postpone till morning. He's smart enough to keep asking questions until I have to get my phone out to search for something so he can watch with me. Took me a few times before I caught on though, the little rascal.
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u/cock_wrecker_supreme 3h ago
isn't their point more that if we discover new elements, it will be here on earth and not in some distant galaxy?
these new elements have a half life of less than a tenth of a second. they can only exist here on earth
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u/Gudthrak 3h ago
I remember specifying 'in the universe' or 'on a planet form another star'. I don't know if the table is confined to earth or not?
The way he explained it to me was that it was a closed system where everything was built out of one of the elemnts on the periodic table, and that I was a stupid child for daring to wonder if there was anything unknown out there.3
u/BOBOnobobo 3h ago
He is definitely rude to have called you stupid for that, and it's ok to ask about it.
Essentially, elements are categorised by the number of protons they have (and electrons, but that should be equal to protons).
We found elements 1-100 something already.
So the left over elements are the ones past the table, the problem is, at a certain number of protons the forces that hold it together can only do so for fractions of a second.
Theoretically, big cosmic events should produce all kinds of atoms because the energies involved are insane, but they won't last even a second, so we'll never find them like that.
They would also be kinda boring.
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u/a_bucket_full_of_goo 3h ago
Anyone who claims science is complete is a moron and it will be the case for a good while
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u/BoingBoingBooty 2h ago
Well, from a semantics viewpoint you could say people don't really discover new elements anymore; they make them.
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u/EthanielRain 1h ago
Sounds like a bad teacher/jerk
He was probably right (depending on the semantics) but he could have explained why or how "new" elements could be found/created
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u/Hoarbag 24m ago
Name and shame!
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u/ridiculousfart 22m ago
Name and shame this guy’s high school chem teacher? Lmao
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u/Expensive_Range7204 2h ago
Sounds like a bad teacher, i asked a very similar question, and was told that we know there are elements missing from the table so there would be more added relatively soon.
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u/hollerican5
9h ago
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you know MAGA mad as hell right now............they hate to see it.................
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u/burritosandbeer 9h ago •
..are you laboring under the assumption that republicans know the first fuckin thing about the periodic table? I'd bet my next paycheck that 65+% of them can't tell you what's in the 1 slot
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u/Sea_Structure_8692 9h ago
That’s assuming they don’t think it’s something that women have once a month.
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u/RealManHumanMan 9h ago
Is it hydrogen? I’m genuinely guessing with VERY limited chemistry knowledge
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u/burritosandbeer 9h ago
It is indeed hydrogen. I'm no wealth of chem knowledge either so cheers
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u/Consistent_Dot1469 6h ago
What does this have to do with MAGA or politics at all? Bot
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u/jonnismizzle 9h ago
Some MAGA supporters would be looking like this right now...if they could read.
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u/_Bike_Hunt 8h ago •
Maga people won’t understand what the periodic table is. The men will probably think it’s a women’s health issue and just get mad at Muslims.
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u/Ok_Mathematician4200 7h ago
This is false information. She was not the person who discovered it. She was on the 2 dozen person team that isolated it 2 years later, thus verifying the discovey of the first team.
This crap takes away credibility from her work.
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u/Kordell_11 2h ago
She was part of a team. "First Element in 14 years" is just straight up wrong. She is the first African American woman to be involved in the discovery of a chemical element and that's good enough. You don't have to add lies to elevate her.
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u/AgreeableAct4176 7h ago
This might be a technicality but aren't new elements created in a laboratory not discovered in nature? Since they're so unstable at that number of subatomic particles?
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u/mybluecathasballs 7h ago
This is correct. As far as we know, the stable elements are discovered. New ones must be created, and are very unstable. There's more to it, but you are correct.
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u/costaccounting 7h ago
They might be created in extreme conditions in space as well but would still be very unstable
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u/shoebacca40 6h ago
Elements after uranium (92) are not naturally occurring. This includes things like Plutonium. Some of those non-naturally occurring elements are used, such as plutonium which obviously has had its uses.
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u/Life-Suit1895 6h ago
Elements after uranium (92) are not naturally occurring.
They might be "naturally" occuring in the way that they are created in tiny amounts in supernovae or neutron star mergers. But of course they almost immediately decay again.
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u/gregzillaman 7h ago
They're created in a laboratory here on earth. Out there (motions to space) somewhere, there's just piles of it.
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u/DustPuzzled414 7h ago
Maybe atoms of it pop into existence every now and then but these elements are so heavy and so unstable I doubt there is much of them out in space.
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u/Rope_antidepressant 7h ago
I too enjoy gesturing to outer space when i want people to understand the probability of something. Like, you don't know what's out there, or what's not.
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u/CannabisAndCoffee 6h ago •
Unlikely, but an incredibly fun and interesting muse. Physics nerd here btw. In theory?
Possibly true in the sense that: Tennessine (the element Clarice Phelps is credited with assisting in the discovery of by purifying 22 milligrams of berkelium-249 in 2010) may be created in extreme collisions in space, such as neutron star mergers or large violent supernovae, BUT it would near instantaneously decay because the half life of even the most stable isotopes are somewhere in the ballpark of 0.05 to 0.1 seconds. HOWEVER, because the universe is so incredibly large, in theory there could be so many neutron star mergers and large supernovae happening at the same time, all creating small amounts of tennessine, that if one took a snapshot of the universe at a moment in time and counted it all up it may be possible to make a pile of it.
This is why I say this is such a fun and interesting muse because it speaks to the incredibly vast nature of our universe, and that even the rarest of things may exist in large quantities on net within it. In fact, we are not even sure if the universe is finite or infinite. What we generally talk about is the Observable Universe, which is about 93 billion light-years across. If the universe is infinite, however, then it is likely, or even perhaps definite, that an exact copy of Earth would exist out there. Physicists have calculated that if that were true, an exact copy of Earth would recur approximately every 10^{10^{122}} meters away. Of course that is outside of our Observable Universe, but it is possible.
(fun fact: this number is so large that trying to convert it to light-years is pointless. 10^{10^{122}} meters is equal to 10^{10^{122}} light-years because the number is so incredibly large that any scale that humans can think of is too small to make a difference. The same is even true if you divide the number by Observable Universe diameters. Still 10^{10^{122}})
Another space fact I love is that the amount of the universe that we can see right now is more than it will ever be again in our lifetimes, or for all time moving forward. Every second we become able to see less and less of the universe as it expands faster than light moves. This is why it is so important to invest in the study of space and space travel, because it only gets more difficult and more out of reach every day.
Physics nerd out🖖
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u/Ball_Analytics 8h ago
You don' t have to misconstrue the truth to make someone great. The truth is great enough as it is but why twist it?
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u/galacticHH 7h ago
Science is about accuracy.
She is the first black woman to be involved in the discovery of a new element. The discovery took place while she was an undergrad. She was on the team that verified the discovery.
That is impressive by itself. No need to embellish the incredible.
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u/MrVengeanceIII 5h ago
FYI the head line makes it sound like she was singularly responsible for finding the element.
She HELPED, along with Major research institutes and national laboratories.
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u/DanNorder 9h ago
I don't know how whoever made the meme thought it was the first new element in 14 years. She's a great researcher, but she by no means did this solo. She's a great woman and speaks at events to get more representation in STEM. She gave a TED talk about the collaborative nature of science and that she was part of a very large team, but it was very inspiring about her humble beginnings. https://www.ted.com/talks/clarice_phelps_how_i_claimed_a_seat_at_the_periodic_table
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u/mariosunny 6h ago
Sorry but this is not true. Tennessine (element 117) was discovered by a Russian/American team in 2010. A separate team, which included Clarice Phelps, confirmed the discovery in 2011.
https://www.lanl.gov/science-engineering/periodic-table/element/tennessine
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u/Quasicrystal1 8h ago
This is misleading. The team she was on created tennessine, element 117, which had been synthesized in 2009-2010. She worked in a team, not alone, like this image implies. The previous few elements, nihonium (113), moscovium (115) and oganesson (118) were first created around 2003-2005, not even half of the 14 years the image states. This is not a new development, was not done only by her, and the only statistic is incorrect. It is a great achievement to fill another slot on the table, but it's also necessary to not spread misinformation about these things.
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u/TheOriginalBroCone 8h ago
Exactly, the caption if anything takes away from her due to credibility issues
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u/Ambitious-Pirate-505 9h ago
For those wondering and needing more than the headline, Clarice Phelps is a nuclear scientist whose work directly contributed to the discovery of tennessine (element 117) , making her the first African American woman involved in the discovery of a chemical element. While she did not personally fire the nuclear beam that created the atoms, her team's crucial preparatory work made the experiment possible.
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u/Adept-Potato-2568 9h ago
I'm confused. What did she do? It sounds like you're saying she was just part of a team that did prep work for a portion of the machine?
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u/WhatIsHerJob-TABLES 8h ago edited 7h ago
That’s how like 99% of all scientific achievements are nowadays. It’s rarely some person having an “aha!” moment on their own, it’s giant teams across the world working together on long, strenuous projects. She was one of many that worked on this. It’s disingenuous to say any one person discovered this. It was a huge group effort from a lot of talented people working together.
Her work is absolutely commendable and remarkable, but she alone did not discover this.
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u/AdIntrepid4978
9h ago
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I know her personally. Very proud of Claire and her team. We celebrated back when the news broke and definitely awesome. She is black history and future
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u/Mits-And-Mobs 5h ago
This is a genuine achievement, but the post is a bit misleading.
Clarice Phelps was part of a large international team involved in the discovery of element 117 (tennessine). Her work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory involved purifying a rare radioactive isotope that was essential to confirming the discovery.
She didn't discover the element single-handedly, and this isn't recent news. The experiments took place over a decade ago, and the element was officially named in 2016. The claim about it being the first new element in 14 years is also incorrect.
She's widely recognised as the first Black woman to contribute to the discovery of a chemical element, which is a significant achievement in its own right. There's no need to exaggerate what happened to celebrate it.
Source: https://physicstoday.aip.org/news/the-overlooked-element-makers
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u/HorrorLengthiness940 5h ago
Thank you I was wondering what element it was and which lab it was at.
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u/like9000ninjas 9h ago
First African American INVOLVED in its discovery along with 61 other people. Still and bad ass but get it right as it dumps on every9ne else that also helped.
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u/WoodsLovelyDarkNDeep 9h ago
I think it would be more correct to state she confirms new element. We don’t really discover new elements on the periodic table. It’s hard to do a quick summary but basically they follow a pattern based on number of electrons (or is it protons) so we just follow the pattern and then confirm them and the scientist that confirms gets to name them
It’s just that the ones higher up where we are now are the by product of radioactivity and so last like microseconds or even shorter times so it’s very difficult to even find them
BobbyBroccoli has an amazing YouTube series about the discovery of new elements yall should check out and in probably getting some of this wrong
Also I’m not taking anything away from her. What she did is something less than 100 (I actually think the number is much less than that) scientists in the world have been able to do despite many many more trying. It’s quite amazing actually. I think only 5 have been added in the last 25+ years. Video is linked below if you want to check it out. It’s actually about a dude who tried to fake an element using this fact
I just think the fact we know so much about the future elements is intetrsting
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u/aPOPblops 8h ago
This is a very semantic/pedantic distinction. I'm all for pedantry, which is why I want to hyper analyze what you've said here and discuss it at length for no good reason.
So let's say there's land over on the other side of the ocean and we haven't been to it yet. We have reason to believe it's there because we have evidence in the form of exotic plants that floated across the ocean or fossils or something.
But the person who reaches that land would be credit for "discovering it" even though they were more or less "confirming" it.
On the other hand; we have Planet X. We know it's there because we have evidence of it's gravitational pull. However, we don't know it's there, we just have it's pattern.
So we might say the person who witnesses it directly for the first time "discovered" planet X merely "confirmed" it. Which I think is a reasonable stance to take.
HOWEVER if we do choose to take that stance; and then it turns out not to be a planet but instead a death-star built by aliens; then we would say the person "discovered" that there was a death star where we thought Planet X was.
That is my really long roundabout way of saying: even if we have every reason to believe something is there, I think it might still be valuable to consider it a "discovery" because we didn't know it was there, we just believed it was there due to strong evidence that it likely would be.
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u/WoodsLovelyDarkNDeep 7h ago
It appears I have met my equal in pedantry…. All very good points actually. I am actually a very big fan of the idea that just cause something has always been a certain way doesn’t mean it always will be so you can’t just go off of that so your point of the Death Star is a good point
I really just wanted to bring up how we go about naming the elements as well as shout out that video and I think I just started my comment inelegantly and for that I apologize. Hers was a monumental achievement
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u/HauntingGummyBear 9h ago
Man, I wonder how excited she was to when she made the discovery. Thats a heck of a way to remembered for all time!
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u/Hutch9109 7h ago
She didn’t discover it. A team did in 2010 and she came onboard in 2012. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet at face value
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u/DryLight269 9h ago
What is the element, link to Article?
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u/4mystuff 9h ago edited 8h ago
Tennesine. She was part of a team that discovered it in 2023. Very cool.
Correction: element was discovered by a Russian/American team in 2010 according to Wikipedia
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u/AnticPosition 8h ago
I suspect it's one of those elements that are so unstable they decay in microseconds?
Still cool stuff.
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u/FrogsJumpFromPussy 2h ago edited 1h ago
This is so misleading, isn't it? More than 200 people worked on the discovery of tennensine, the 117 element on the periodic table. More than 60 people are considered essential to the discovery, so Clarice is a tiny part of a huge team and effort.
Although phelpsium would've sounded so much better than tennensine...
Edit, in fact all the post is misleading clickbait, unfortunately: tennensine was discovered back in 2010, 16 years ago. There's no "first new element in 14 years" however you look at it, because around 2010 it was discovered another new periodic element called oganneson (element 118)
Regardless of the sub, the disinformation shouldn't be alowed reddit-wise. why did the mods even let this post up? All of it is a lie and doesn't do any service to Clarice Phelps either.
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u/GGXImposter 36m ago
Don’t we know all elements, at least theoretically.
To my understanding the elements are identified by their number of protons.
So after Organneson there is some other element that is 119. Then after that there is 120, 121, 122….
Those just aren’t stable. So they likely only exist for super tiny lengths of time.
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u/PillCallGirl23 9h ago
Phelps was involved in the discovery of the second-heaviest known element, tennessine (element 117)
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u/KittyFaise 9h ago
She’s recognized as the first African American woman involved in discovering an element, but tennessine was discovered in 2010, 16 years ago. Her achievement is real; the headline is misleading.
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u/Restart_from_Zero 7h ago
Man, that should say "created".
Created an entirely new element is so much more badass than just discovering one.
Here's what she did:
Purification Work: Working as a nuclear chemist and technician at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Phelps spent months purifying a crucial sample of berkelium-249. CNN +2
The Experiment: This purified berkelium was bombarded with calcium isotopes in a collaboration with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research to synthesize and confirm element 117.
Recognition: The element was officially named tennessine, and Phelps's vital role in its creation and confirmation is recognized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) .
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u/Consistent_Dot1469 6h ago
What’s with all the bot comments about MAGA not liking this? What does this have to do with politics? Damn the bots are ruining Reddit.
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u/IronMonkeyofHam 6h ago
The mods set it up this way, to mislead young people. Many are oblivious to these wiles
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u/sammy_anarchist
8h ago
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Here's the rest of that team that WASN'T "whoopsie accidentally excluded".
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u/chironomidae 8h ago
I've never understood why blurbs like this will often have an insert with a picture of the same person. I'm assuming it's a bot/ai thing, but I'm like..... what is the insert supposed to be telling me?
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u/Sebastianblack13 5h ago
This reminds me of a good chuckle i had the other day: someone looked me in the eye and said "well we've discovered all the elements in the universe, soo"
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u/EquipmentFew882 2h ago
Ms. Phelps is a Brilliant Scientist -- and that's what matters in my perspective.
We need more people who want to be Scientists and engineers.
Thank you for posting.
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u/DaddyDontTakeNoMess 43m ago
I don’t mean to reduce her accomplishments, but DAMN is she beautiful! A smart Black woman is my kryponite
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u/Educational-Cod-3819 5h ago
I hate social media posts like these that take the work of a brilliant person, then blow it into realms of insanity for clickbait nonsense. Go to hell "blazwire".
The last time a single person discovered an element was almost a century ago. Since then elements have been CREATED by teams of people, like the team this scientist was on. No single person can have credit on their own.
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u/Longjumping_Stuff20 6h ago
You just take the previous highest and add one, don't you?
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u/Uturndriving 🌍 9h ago
Kind of makes me wonder about what other human advances might have been lost to oppression.
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u/Hutch9109 7h ago •
Read the actual story instead of this sensationalized headline. It’s a story from 2010 and she didn’t “discover” it
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u/Ok-Round-1473 9h ago •
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."
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u/ToiletTwinkie 2h ago
in this case, nothing would have been loss because she wasnt even a researcher at the time. this was in 2010 when she didnt even have a masters or phd yet. she was just a technician at the laboratory.
its not a role where you need to use your brain to come up with ideas. its a role where you just need to perform the tasks you are given. ofc these are specialized tasks that need specialized training but she is far from being the only one capable of doing her job at the time.
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u/testtdk 8h ago
I was all thrilled until I found out she named the new element after Tennessee.
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u/lunarfaze 9h ago
So, she discovered this in 2010 and it was added in 2016. This is incredibly old news.
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u/LumplessWaffleBatter 7h ago
I don't want to discredit Phelps' accomplishments, but I do want to add context because this post is disengenouus at best:
She was the first African-American woman to be credited in the discovery of a new element. It's not like she was Tony Stark creating a new element in her basement. She was a part of a massive, international effort.
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u/thelamb213 5h ago
Can we see it ? Do you got a real picture of it ? Can we see it? Then it's not real?
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u/LightenUpPeeps 3h ago
When I was in school, there were 108 elements on the periodic table. Am I showing my age? Also 9 planets in our solar system.
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u/HappyAd8870 3h ago
Tell me if am wrong but all the "missing" elements from the table are predictable and this fact is coming from the guy that invented the table himself Mendeleïev.
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u/AgapitoVelezOvando 1h ago
All by herself? That is truly impressive.Usually there's a team of scientists behind discoveries like this.
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u/Sufficient_astrobird 52m ago
Iran war has taught me that nuclear scientists are targets so she better be careful.
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u/Jumping_Mouse 37m ago
Thank god this happened after midterms or else wed be hearing about how its all dei already
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u/BodhingJay 29m ago
Tennessine, element 117.. a super heavy unstable. Pretty cool stuff
Keep it up Clarice!
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u/Leadjockey 21m ago edited 13m ago
Tennesine 117 was discovered in 2010. She didn't "discover" it. She was part of a team that produced purified Berkellium 249, an isotope later used in experiments confirming the discovery of Tennesine.
In 2010, it was the first new element discovered in 8 years (Oganesson 118 was discovered in 2002) it was confirmed by IUPAC in 2015 so that's probably where "first new element in 14 years" comes from.
No new element has been discovered in the last 11 Years/16 years depending on where you count it from.
Not taking anything away from her contribution, but that headline is just false clickbaity nonsense.
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u/Constant-Cricket-960 21m ago
My Brain read this as “Nuclear scientist Clarice helps discover…”
I was like damn Clarice helped find a new element and y’all don’t even know her last name??
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u/159551771 17m ago
The discovery of tennessine was officially announced in Dubna, Russia, by a Russian–American collaboration in April 2010, which makes it the most recently discovered element. One of its daughter isotopes was created directly in 2011, partially confirming the experiment's results. The experiment was successfully repeated by the same collaboration in 2012 and by a joint German–American team in May 2014. In December 2015, the Joint Working Party of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), which evaluates claims of discovery of new elements, recognized the element and assigned the priority to the Russian–American team. In June 2016, the IUPAC published a declaration stating that the discoverers had suggested the name tennessine, a name which was officially adopted in November 2016.[a]
Clarice Phelps was part of ORNL's team that collaborated with JINR;[64] the IUPAC recognizes her as the first African-American woman to be involved with the discovery of a chemical element
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u/Mellero47 17m ago
Shiiiiiiit, that table's gonna need an expansion leaf when we finally get off this rock and start visiting other planets. We don't know every element that exists in the universe, only the ones we've found here.
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u/No_Creme_9279 6m ago
Clarice Phelps was part of the team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) that helped discover tennessine.
Her main contribution was helping purify berkelium-249, an extremely rare radioactive material. This purified berkelium was then sent to Russia, where scientists bombarded it with calcium-48 to create tennessine (element 117).
She is recognized as the first African American woman involved in the discovery of a chemical element.
It was first created in 2010 by a Russian-American team led by Yuri Oganessian. It was officially named tennessine in 2016, after the U.S. state of Tennessee.
So she was only a part of the team that helped purify berkelium, then the russian team created tenessine and it was named that in 2016.
This post borders between misinformation and outright fiction.
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