Superheavies
Smashing atoms into atoms,
Gee, that looks like fun !
And easy-peasy with the lightest ones –
Just ask the Sun.
But when they get more bloated,
It gets hard to make them kiss –
They should be bigger targets,
But incredibly – they miss !
Or else they break each other up,
They fizz instead of fuse –
But smash and smash and smash again,
And finally, they’ll schmooz.
Just one or two or half-a-dozen
Made in once, we think,
Before they break apart again
In quicker than a blink.
But then…but there’s a secret doubt
That lingers round the lab –
For did we really, truly make ’em
With our smash and grab ?
Was all of that momentum dissipated
From each core
Before they spat some neutrons out
And were themselves no more ?
Was the Strong Force strong and forceful
In all nuclei
For that thousanth of a second
That it took each fluke to die ?
And have they really earned their place
Upon the sacred Table,
Without a single isotope between them
Pure and stable ?
And yet, who gets to say what form
An atom occupies ?
And must they hang on long enough
To boil or oxidise ?
It looks as if this argument
Is set to run and run…
But smashing atoms into atoms ?
Gee, that looks like fun !
Elements above urnium are all man-made, although no doubt a few superheavies are spat out of a supernova, they’ll decompose before any future star system coalesces from its dandruff. But the real reason they’re man-made because this area of research seems to be little more than willy-waving, (and that’s something best left to the biologists).
Rhyming Couplets 