And if they were, they might be found in air. Since the two known noble elements, helium and argon, are both gases, Ramsay and Travers hoped the missing elements were also gases. Chemists think of empty boxes in the periodic table as "elements waiting to be discovered."
The missing noble gases had atomic numbers 10, 36, 54, and 86. The periodic table contained empty boxes between helium and argon and below argon. But no other elements in the family had been found.
They were helium ( atomic number 2) and argon ( atomic number 18). Discovery and namingīy 1898, two members of the noble gas family had been discovered. All of them involve lighting systems in one way or another. Krypton has relatively few commercial uses. Since they are so inactive, they are also called the inert gases. Until the 1960s, no compound of these gases was known. These gases have been given the name "noble" because they act as if they are "too arrogant" to react with other elements. The periodic table is a chart that shows how chemical elements are related to each other. The term noble gas refers to elements in Group 18 (VIIIA) of the periodic table. Three of those gases -krypton, xenon, and neon, were discovered for the first time this way. As it did so, each of the gases that make up normal air boiled off, one at a time. Ramsay and Travers discovered the gases by allowing liquid air to evaporate. Krypton was one of three noble gases discovered in 1898 by Scottish chemist and physicist Sir William Ramsay (1852-1916) and English chemist Morris William Travers (1872-1961). This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Note: This article, originally published in 1998, was updated in 2006 for the eBook edition. The 10 Best Superhero Origin Stories of All Timeġ0 Real Alien Worlds That Resemble 'Star Wars' PlanetsĬopyright 2012, a TechMediaNetwork company. Everyone looks good.'"įollow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter or. "I said, 'If it makes no difference one way or the other, could you shave a few pounds off me?'" he recalled. Tyson said he was pleased with the finished comic, especially because the artists were able to honor his one request in portraying him. "The universe is revealing to him what he already knew, but it wasn't real to him until he actually saw it." Then, Superman (using a new power not previously ascribed to him) uses his supercomputer-like internal calculation abilities to combine the data into a single picture of Krypton exploding. To do this, they ask all the world's telescopes to view Krypton at the same time and send their observations back to the planetarium. ("The word 'interferometer' actually appears" in the comic! Tyson gloated). To observe the end of Krypton, Superman and the scientists at the Hayden Planetarium create an interferometer - a giant virtual telescope resulting from combining the observations of various telescopes spread out by great distances. How can Superman view the death of his home planet, when no real-life telescopes are powerful enough to view a planet at such a distance?Īfter throwing some ideas out that were realistic, but boring (such as having the superhero view data points showing that the light of the host star had stopped diminishing when the planet passed in front of it, signaling the planet's destruction), Tyson and the comic writers settled on a scheme. Then Tyson was faced with a second challenge. Tyson even approached the International Astronomical Union, the body in charge of official names for astronomical objects, to ask if they would rename LHS 2520 to Rao, in honor of Superman, but he was told no. The star in question is a red dwarf star called LHS 2520 that is cooler and smaller than our sun. The astronomer looked in a catalog of nearby stars and found a red star at about the right distance: 29 light-years. "I thought, 'Let me see if there's a star whose light takes 20-something years to get here,'" Tyson said. Though Superman made the journey quickly, the light from the destruction of Krypton is just reaching Earth now, Tyson said, when Superman is in his late 20s. The infant hero was somehow instantaneously transported to Earth, where he grew up, eventually camouflaging himself as mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent. The planet is supposed to have self-destructed soon after Superman was born. The real-life star that could play host to fictional planet Krypton must meet certain characteristics. "If they're just making stuff up, they don't need us." "I was proud and honored that our institution could serve this role," Tyson said. DC Comics jumped at the chance to infuse real science in the story, and a collaboration was born.