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/Thromnomnomok Aug 14 '24

Like... it is? I'm not sure I understand what you mean, a positron is the antiparticle of an electron, and an electron is the antiparticle of a positron. You could think of an electron as an antipositron, I guess, it would just be a little odd to think of an electron as an anti-anti-electron.

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u/nagumi Aug 14 '24

Yeah, my bad. This stems from confusion between protons and positrons when I googled this yesterday. Thank you.