In some sense, what you might have suspected from the first day of high-school chemistry is true: The periodic table is a colossal waste of time. Nine out of every 10 atoms in the universe are hydrogen, the first element and the major constituent of stars. The other 10 percent of all atoms are helium. Sam Kean Read Quote
Geneticists in the early 1900s believed that nature – in an effort to avoid wasting precious space within chromosomes – would pack as many genes into each chromosome as possible. Sam Kean Read Quote
Before the Human Genome Project, most scientists assumed, based on our complex brains and behaviors, that humans must have around 100,000 genes; some estimates went as high as 150,000. Sam Kean Read Quote
Atoms of Element 118 fill an outer shell with electrons, creating a special type of element called a noble gas. Noble gases are natural turning points on the table, ending one row and pointing to the next. Sam Kean Read Quote
Radium, discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898, was especially popular: the ‘it’ element of its day. Radium glows an eerie blue-green in the dark, giving off light for years without any apparent power source. People had never seen anything like it. Sam Kean Read Quote
If studying the periodic table taught me nothing else, it’s that the credulity of human beings for periodic table panaceas is pretty much boundless. Sam Kean Read Quote
Many different elements can form isomers, but only a few elements on the periodic table, like hafnium, can form isomers that last more than fractions of a second – and might therefore be turned into weapons. Sam Kean Read Quote
Some scientists claim – although these claims are contentious – that they can form deadly isomers with simple X-rays and that hafnium can multiply the power of these X-rays to an astounding degree, converting them into gamma rays up to 250 times more potent than the X-rays. Sam Kean Read Quote
Scientists didn’t discover the noble gas helium – the second most common element in the universe – on Earth until 1895. And they thought it existed in minute quantities only, until miners found a huge underground cache in Kansas in 1903. Sam Kean Read Quote
Scientists have continued to tinker with different elements and have learned new ways to store and deliver energy. Sam Kean Read Quote
