So, there was that subplot in Iron Man 2, where Tony Stark was slowly dying from the polonium inside his arc reactor. In order to save his life, he invents a new element to make the reactor out of, which just happens to be more powerful by making a particle accelerator in his lab, which is actually more reasonable than you might think.
Part of the reason explained that it was killing him was because it was highly toxic, and the main reason that polonium is so toxic is because of its radioactivity. Because polonium is such a heavy element, it is highly radioactive, particularly emitting a lot of alpha radiation: not very penetrating but if it can get into your body, highly ionising. So... not exactly the best thing to stick into your body.
However, the new element that Tony makes should really be even worse. The only elements undiscovered at the time (since we've actually discovered a bunch of new ones since the movie's come out. Science is awesome.) were the ones with electron numbers above 118, which is Ununoctium.
These are even more radioactive than polonium, since as the atoms get heavier, they decay faster. Which means that yes, it would have more power, just as the movie stated, but it'd also be killing Tony a heck of a lot faster.
It also wouldn't last long enough to be used as a heart battery. Even Ununoctium only has a half life of about a millisecond. That's barely enough time for a laser blast, let alone to keep a man for a normal lifespan.
However, there is still hope.
He could be using antimatter, and could have created antilithium.
Now, this seems like a bit of a cop-out. "Oh, he didn't create an element, he created an anti-element!", but it's reasonable.
One of the things we know he used to create the element is a particle accelerator. How is antimatter made? Particle accelerator. One tick for antilithium.
Toxic? Not at all, you just have to keep it in an electric field so it doesn't blow everything up. Two ticks for antilithium.
More energy than polonium? Well, you could say that, considering just one particle of antimatter is more powerful than an atomic bomb. That's more than enough power.
And of course Tony Stark seems to have mad science and mad engineering as a superpower. If anyone could construct something to make antilithium, it'd be him.
Now the problem with this.
The desk.
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| Or table. Or game of blocks that went WAY too far. Your choice |
Even when Tony Stark removes all of the stuff that was on the table just to make it look like an actual park and not a secret message, there are loads more than three pavilions, which is the number of positrons that would be around antilithium. However, we could just pass this aside using story.
Howard might have been wrong.
He's stated to be an extremely good scientist, but limited by his times.He died in 1998, and the first antimatter particles produced, positrons were only done so in 2008. So it's possible that he never learnt about antimatter or knew about it in any way, and Tony came onto it whilst trying to make his father's plan.
It's also possible he did know about it, but didn't know how hard it would be to create anti-elements. He might have just assumed that by Tony's time, they'd have done a lot of the elements already, and he'd need a new anti-element to complete the arc reactor, rather than just use one that's the anti-element of the otherwise basic lithium.
The arc reactor would be incredibly dangerous, and if the electric field broke, Tony would explode. He doesn't really seem the type to care though.
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