Coronius

While observing a total solar eclipse in North America on August 7, 1869, William Harkness and Charles Young (Jung) independently discovered a low-intensity emission line with a wavelength of 530.3 nm in the green part of the corona spectrum. Young identified it (1879) as the Fe 1474 line on the Kirchhoff scale . Since this line did not correspond to any of the elements known then, it was suggested that a new chemical element called coronium be discovered on the Sun ^[1] .

The coronation hypothesis was widely recognized due to the triumph of spectral analysis - the discovery of helium by the spectral method on the Sun (27 years earlier than on Earth: 1868 and 1895, respectively). However, numerous attempts to detect coronium in the earth's atmosphere, minerals, and volcanic gases have been unsuccessful or erroneous. Later, other unidentified spectral lines were discovered on the Sun, which led to the “discovery” of several more hypothetical elements .

Coronius existed in the scientific and educational literature until the publication of the work (1939) of astrophysicists Bengt Edlen and Walter Grotrian with the proof that the spectral line 530.3 nm belongs to highly ionized iron (Fe ¹³⁺ ). Other spectral lines were also identified with other forbidden transitions in multiply ionized metal atoms, for example Ni ^14+. This has become one of the confirmations of the highest temperature of the solar corona.

According to the opinion that existed at the beginning of the 20th century, the fact of the discovery of an element in the outer regions of the solar corona characterized it, like helium, as a very light inert gas . In the article “An Attempt to Chemical Understanding of the World Ether” (1902), D. I. Mendeleev considers coronium as an inert gas with an atomic mass equal to unity, giving it a place in front of hydrogen in the first row of the zero group. According to Mendeleev, coronium should have a hydrogen density of not more than 0.2 and be detected in the Earth’s atmosphere ^[2] .

... coronium or another gas with a density of about 0.2 - relative to hydrogen, can in no way be a world ether; its density (for hydrogen) is high for this, it will wander, perhaps for a long time, in world fields, break out of the bonds of the earth, break into them again by chance, but still it will not break out of the sphere of gravity of the sun, and, of course, between the stars are more massive than our central star.

- Mendeleev D.I. An attempt at a chemical understanding of the world ether. SPb., 1905

The search for the place of coronium in the periodic system of chemical elements was connected by Mendeleev with an understanding of the physical causes of the periodicity and chemical nature of the world ether (in that article, Mendeleev finds a place in the zero group for the lightest hypothetical element called by him newton ).

Thus, it can be shown that in the first row, the first element in front of hydrogen is an element of the zero group with an atomic weight of 0.4 (maybe this is Yong coronium), and in the row zero, in the zero group, there is a limit element with a negligible atomic weight, not capable of chemical interactions and having therefore extremely fast own partial (gas) movement.

- Mendeleev D.I. Fundamentals of chemistry. VIII ed., 1906, p. 613 et seq.

The hypothesis of the existence of coronium, as well as other elements lighter than hydrogen, lost its relevance after the work of Rutherford , Mosley and Bohr , which laid the foundation of the quantum-mechanical model of the atom and modern ideas about periodicity . Modern speculations that coronium and newtonium are nothing but brilliant foresight of the discoveries of the neutron and neutrino have no basis.

• Nebulius
• Spectral analysis
• List of non-existent chemical elements

• D.I. Mendeleev. Textbook "Fundamentals of Chemistry", VIII edition, St. Petersburg, 1906.

• Identification of Spectral Lines - History of Coronium
• Kozlovsky B., Torgashev A. 10 fallacies of science Russian reporter November 26, 2008, No. 45 (75)