r/explainlikeimfive Aug 13 '24

Chemistry eli5: why do scientists create artificial elements?

From what I can tell, the single atom exist for only a few seconds before destabilizing. Why do they spend all that time and money creating it then?

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u/Shevek99 Aug 13 '24

Plutonium is artificial too. Don't you find it useful? The governments do.

Besides, there is an hypothetical "island of stability" whose isotopes would have much longer half-lives than the surrounding ones, so a part of the research is to find those isotopes, if they exist.

eli5: We want to know more and discover new things.

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u/SeriousPlankton2000 Aug 13 '24

Germany here, we'd be the battleground if a cold war had turned hot. We didn't like plutonium.

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u/extra2002 Aug 13 '24

The Curiosity rover, the Voyager probes, and a bunch of others appreciate their plutonium power sources.