Creation Moment 6/7/2024 - Color of "Beautiful" Chemistry gives "JOY" to Chemists

Lift up your eyes on high, 

and behold who hath created these things... 

Isaiah 40:26

"Promethium only exists naturally in minuscule amounts – Earth’s crust contains just about half a kilogram of the element.

It is now routinely produced, albeit in tiny quantities, from the

radioactive decay of uranium and can be incorporated in simple compounds for uses like luminous paint or nuclear batteries. But its extremely radioactive nature means it is inherently unstable, making it difficult to form long-lasting compounds that are easy to study. The crystal structures that it does exist in also exert forces on promethium’s chemical bonds, obscuring its fundamental chemistry, such as how long its atomic bonds are and how they form with other compounds.

Now, Alexander Ivanov at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and his colleagues have found a way to form a promethium compound in water. This dampens some of the damaging effects of radioactivity and avoids the obscuring effects of crystal structures, allowing the team to study the element’s chemistry in detail for the first time.

“It’s rather beautiful chemistry, and to see the delicate pink color of this complex is a real joy,” says Andrea Sella at University College London." 

Nature