Jupiter
Introduction
"In that which is manifest (that is to say, the body of Jupiter) the other six corporeal metals are spiritually concealed, but one more deeply and more tenaciously than the other."
"As zinc, according to Paracelsus, is for the most part a spurious offspring of copper, so is Bismuth of tin. It is partly fluidic and partly ductile."
"Although, as has been said, Nature lies invisibly in bodies and in substances; nevertheless, that invisibility is led to visibility by means of those bodies themselves. According as the essence of each is situated, so is it seen visibly in its virtues and in its colours. Invisible bodies, however, have no other method than this corporeal one."
Tin
"Jupiter has nothing of a Quintessence in his composition, but is of the nature of the four elementaries."
"Concerning the spirit of Jupiter this should be known, that it is derived from the white and pale substance of fire, together with a nature of a peculiar crepitation and fragility, not malleable like Mars."
Properties
Tin is a metal of a pure white to slightly blueish-white colour. It is highly mallable, but somewhat less ductile, its tensile strength being low and most impurities tend to increase its strength.
Under certain conditions, including low temperatures, tin crumbles down into a gray, friable granular powder, which is generally considered to be an allotropic modification. This property of tin may be attended with serious consequenses, and has therefore been the subject of much study, where it is spoken of as "Tinpest" or "Tin sickness".
The change to gray tin is a slow process and depends on the temperature and the length of exposure to it. The change commences at a temperature of 13.2°C at which it takes place with extreme slowness, the maximum rate being attained at temeratures below -50°C. If any object, in which the change has commenced, is allowed to remain at ordinary temperatures, the formation of gray tin continues, since the particles of gray tin, once formed, act as fresh catalytic centres.
Tin appears to be dimorphous and to crystallise in both the rhombic and the tetragonal systems; it would appear that the rhombic tin is brittle, whereas the common tetragonal tin is malleable; the later changes to the former at about 170°C to 200°C, thus giving rise to the brittleness of the metal at this temperature.
Tin shows a very marked tendancy to crystallise on solidification, and has always a more or less crystalline structure. When a bar of tin is bent, it emits a low crackling noise, the so called "cry" of tin due apparently to the rubbing of the crystals against each other.
Binary Phase Diagrams
"So it must be noticed that in the case of Jupiter the air supplies a body, and in the case of no other metal. And of this, although some part ascends together with it and remains mixed inseparably with the other three elements, still it is not coporeal air, but adheres to, and concurs with, the others, and is inseparable from them."
"The more remote, therefore, Jupiter is found to be from Mars and Venus, and the nearer Sol and Luna, the more "goldness" or "silveriness" if I may so say, it contains in its body, and the greater, stronger, more visible, more tangilbe, more amiable, more acceptable, more distinguished, and more true it is found than in some remote body."
Below are some binary phase diagrams for tin and certain other metals.
Gold and Tin
Silver and Tin
Copper and Tin
Lead and Tin
Iron and Tin
Nickel and Tin
Cobalt and Tin
Platinum and Tin
Antimony and Tin
Bismuth
"Two kinds of Antimony are found: one the common black, by which Sol is purified when liquefied therein. This has the closest affinity with Saturn. The other kind is the white, which is also called Magnesia and Bismuth. It has the greatest affinity with Jupiter, and when mixed with the other Antimony it augments Luna."
"It is the matter of the stone, which the philosophers call their red, and sometimes their white magnesia. In the second it is exceedingly white and transparent like the heavens. It is something like common quicksilver, but of such a celestial and transcendent brightness, that nothing on earth can be compared to it. It is the child of the elements, a pure virgin from whom nothing has been generated as yet. When she breeds, it is by the fire of Nature, which is her husband. She is neither animal, vegatable, nor mineral, nor is she an extraction from these; she is pre-existant to them all, and is their mother. She is a pure simple substance, yeilding to nothing but love, because generation is her aim, and that is never accomplised by violence. She produces from her heart a thick, heavy, snow white water, which is the Lac Virginis, and afterwards blood from her heart. Lastly she presents a secret crystal. She is one and three, but at the same time she is four and five. She is the Catholic Magnesia, the Sperm of the World, out of which all natural things are generated. Her body is in a sense incorruptable; the common elements will not destroy it, neither does she mix with them essentially. Outwardly she resembles a stone, and yet she is no stone. The philosophers call her their white gum, water of their sea, water of life, most pure and blessed water; she is a thick, permanent, saltish water, which does not wet the hand, a dry water, viscous and slimy, and generated from the saline fatness of the earth. Fire cannot destroy her, for she is herself fire, having within her a portion of the universal fire of Nature, and a secret, celestial spirit, animated and quickened by God. She is a middle nature between thick and thin, not altogether earthly, not wholly igneous, but a mean aerial substance, to be found everywhere and at all seasons."
Properties
Bismuth is not readily attacked by air at ordinary temperatures, but on heating in air it is converted to trioxide. When heated in air to its boiling point it burns with a faint blueish white flame, forming bismuth trioxide, which condenses as a yellow deposit of "flowers of bismuth" upon a cold surface placed in the flame.
Bismuth is not attacked by hydrochloric acid in the absence of air, but in the presence of air it is slowly dissolved. No hydrogen is evolved. It is readily dissolved by cold nitric acid or aqua regia and by hot sulphuric acid.
Bismuth does not combine directly with nitrogen, and with phosphorus only with difficulty. With arsenic and antimony it forms alloys; it is doubtful if intermetallic compounds are formed with either.
No binary compound of bismuth and antimony has yet been obtained; the two metals form a continuous series of solid solutions.
In the electrolysis of fused alloys of copper, tin and bismuth at 1000°C copper migrates to the cathode and tin and bismuth to the anode.
Bismuth and Antimony Phase Diagram
Bismuth can be seen below before and after purging with antimony. The bismuth on the left is pure and on the right it has had the antimony removed.
Alpha Decay
Alpha decay is a nuclear decay process where an unstable nucleus changes to another element by shooting out a particle composed of two protons and two neutrons or a helium nucleus. This ejected particle is known as an alpha particle. Alpha decay occurs in massive nuclei that have a large proton to neutron ratio.
Experimental detection of alpha particles from the radioactive decay of natural bismuth - The only naturally occurring isotope of bismuth, 209, is commonly regarded as the heaviest stable isotope. But like most other heavy nuclei abundant in nature and characterized by an exceptionally long lifetime, it is metastable with respect to alpha decay. However, the decay usually evades observation because the nuclear structure of bismuth 209 gives rise to an extremely low decay probability and, moreover, generates low-energy alpha particles difficult to detect.
Bismuth breaks half-life record for alpha decay - Physicists in France have measured the longest ever radioactive half-life - over twenty billion billion years - in a naturally occurring element that decays by emitting alpha-particles. Nőel Coron and colleagues at the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale in Orsay used a ‘scintillating bolometer’ at very low temperatures to detect the emission of alpha particles – charged particles that consist of two protons and two neutrons – as bismuth-209 decays into thallium-205.
Radioactive Half Lives
Natural radioactive processes are characterized by a half-life, the time it takes for half of the material to decay radioactively. The half-life of a specific radioactive isotope is constant; it is unaffected by conditions and is independent of the initial amount of that isotope.
Uranium-238 has a half life of 4.51 billion years. This means that it would take 4.51 billion years for uranium-238 to decay into a ratio of half uranium-238 and half thorium-234. Uranium-235 (another naturally occurring isotope of uranium) has a shorter half life than uranium-238, that's only ~700 million years.
Radioactive Decay chains
Below is a series of radioactive decay chains. It is interesting to note that the final stable isotope on three of the fours series is lead.
Helium
Helium constitutes about 23 percent of the mass of the universe and is thus second in abundance to hydrogen in the cosmos. Helium is concentrated in stars, where it is synthesized from hydrogen by nuclear fusion. Although helium occurs in Earth’s atmosphere only to the extent of 1 part in 200,000 (0.0005 percent) and small amounts occur in radioactive minerals, meteoric iron, and mineral springs, great volumes of helium are found as a component (up to 7.6 percent) in natural gases in the United States. Smaller supplies have been discovered in Algeria, Australia, Poland, Qatar, and Russia. Ordinary air contains about 5 parts per million of helium, and Earth’s crust is only about 8 parts per billion.
The helium that is present on Earth is not a primordial component but has been generated by radioactive decay. Alpha particles, ejected from the nuclei of heavier radioactive substances, are nuclei of the isotope helium-4. Helium does not accumulate in large quantities in the atmosphere because Earth’s gravity is not sufficient to prevent its gradual escape into space.
Helium-4 is by far the most plentiful of the stable isotopes: helium-4 atoms outnumber those of helium-3 about 700,000:1 in atmospheric helium and about 7,000,000:1 in certain helium-bearing minerals.
As of 2023, the reserves of helium in the United States amounted to more than 8.5 billion cubic meters, making it the country with the largest reserves of helium globally. Algeria was the second leading country for which helium reserve data was available, with reserves totaling 1.8 billion cubic meters and next largest reserves are in Russia with 1.7 billion cubic meters.
Some questionable theories
It is widely accepted by both geologists and astronomers that Earth is roughly 4.6 billion years old. This age has been obtained from the isotopic analysis of many meteorites as well as of soil and rock samples from the Moon by such dating methods as rubidium–strontium and uranium–lead.
Earth is estimated to be 4.54 billion years old, plus or minus about 50 million years. Scientists have scoured the Earth searching for the oldest rocks to radiometrically date. In northwestern Canada, they discovered rocks about 4.03 billion years old. Then, in Australia, they discovered minerals about 4.3 billion years old. Researchers know that rocks are continuously recycling, due to the rock cycle, so they continued to search for data elsewhere. Since it is thought the bodies in the solar system may have formed at similar times, scientists analyzed moon rocks collected during the moon landing and even meteorites that have crash-landed on Earth. Both of these materials dated to between 4.4 and 4.5 billion years.
The Solar System formed about 4.6 billion years ago from material in a massive, rotating cloud of gas and dust called the solar nebula. Gravity caused this cloud to collapse in on itself, spin, and flatten into a disk shape. Most of the material in that cloud was pulled toward the center, forming the protostar that would eventually become our Sun. The rest of the material began to come together into clumps called planetesimals. These in turn gradually came together with other planetesimals, forming larger bodies called protoplanets. Earth started as one of these protoplanets, likely about 4.5 billion years ago.
We can calculate the abundances of Uranium 235 and Uranium 238 at the time the Earth was formed. Knowing further that the production ratio of U-235 to U-238 in a supernova is about 1.65, we can calculate that if all of the uranium now in the solar system were made in a single supernova, this event must have occurred some 6.5 billion years ago. This 'single stage' is, however, an oversimplification. In fact, multiple supernovae from over 6 billion to about 200 million years ago were involved. Additionally, studies of the isotopic abundances of elements, such as silicon and carbon in meteorites, have shown that more than ten separate stellar sources were involved in the genesis of solar system material. Thus the relative abundance of U-235 and U-238 at the time of formation of the solar system: Cannot be inverted to a 'single stage' model age. Is essentially an accidental and unique value. Reflects the input of the explosive debris of many progenitor stars.