In chemistry, a synthetic element is a chemical element that does not occur naturally on Earth, and can only be created artificially. So far 20 synthetic elements have been created (those with atomic numbers 99–118). All are unstable, decaying with half-lives between a good year and milliseconds.
Nine other elements were first created artificially and thus considered synthetic, but later discovered to exist naturally (in trace quantities) as well; among them plutonium.
Read more about Synthetic Element: Properties, History, List of Synthetic Elements
Famous quotes containing the words synthetic and/or element:
“In every philosophical school, three thinkers succeed one another in the following way: the first produces out of himself the sap and seed, the second draws it out into threads and spins a synthetic web, and the third waits in this web for the sacrificial victims that are caught in it—and tries to live off philosophy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)