• spittingimage@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I watched a Youtube clip recently that mentioned there’s a theorised ‘island of stability’ in transuranic elements around atomic number 160. These ultra-heavy elements would be happy to exist without decaying into lighter elements. It mentioned the asteroid 33 Polyhymnia as a possible Compact Ultra Dense Object because measurements show its average density to be about three times higher than osmium.

    Almost in passing, the presenter mentioned that the explosion of a CUDO entering the atmosphere above Tunguska would produce the effect we see.

    • infeeeee@lemm.eeOP
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      1 year ago

      Hmm, interesting. But the guy in the video doesn’t speak a lot about the criticism of this theorem:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Polyhymnia

      For example, the 68 km (42 mi)-diameter asteroid 675 Ludmilla was originally measured to have a density of 73.99±15.05 g/cm3 in Carry’s study,[5] but improved orbit calculations in 2019 showed that it had a much lower density of 3.99±1.94 g/cm3.[14]

      So there is another meteor, which was estimated the same way at the same time as 33 Polyhymnia, and they measured again later and they found it was 20 times less dense…

      While it sounds like an interesting theorem this doesn’t shine a good light on it. It’s also strange that he “forgot” to mention this in the video.

      • spittingimage@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        While it sounds like an interesting theorem this doesn’t shine a good light on it. It’s also strange that he “forgot” to mention this in the video.

        He does say that the measurements need to be confirmed, but it’s way at the end of the video.

        • infeeeee@lemm.eeOP
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          1 year ago

          Yes, I watched the video, but he didn’t mentioned that there was already a similar meteor where they already remeasured. It lowered a bit my expectations after I looked this up.