Undiscovered elements?

[Norbert]

Are there undiscovered elements (naturally occurring and stable) somewhere in the universe? Or have we pretty much found all of the naturally occurring elements that are stable?

Edited August 2, 2012 by Norbert

[Moontanman]

Are there undiscovered elements (naturally occurring and stable) somewhere in the universe? Or have we pretty much found all of the naturally occurring elements that are stable?

 

 

It's pretty much a certainty that the universe does not contain any stable elements we do not know about.

[Norbert]

It's pretty much a certainty that the universe does not contain any stable elements we do not know about.

 

That's what I figured, but I bet there are a vast number of unstable ones, or perhaps even stable/unstable elements that could exist but were never formed because conditions in the universe simply did not allow it yet.

 

That brings me to another question. Is any given universe, assuming its identical or nearly identical to ours in terms of physical forces, somehow limited to the elements we know of?

[juanrga]

Are there undiscovered elements (naturally occurring and stable) somewhere in the universe? Or have we pretty much found all of the naturally occurring elements that are stable?

 

All known elements are condensed in the 140 year-old periodic table of the elements. And the new ones have been synthesized by us in the laboratory. For instance, the past year IUPAC officially added the new elements Flerovium (114) and Livermorium (116) to the periodic table.

[swansont]

That brings me to another question. Is any given universe, assuming its identical or nearly identical to ours in terms of physical forces, somehow limited to the elements we know of?

 

According to what we know, the elements with larger Z than what we can now observe aren't going to be stable. Too many protons repelling for any to hold together for long. There may be some that are less unstable, however; they would have a filled shell of protons and/or neutrons.

[StringJunky]

The elements are defined by the number of protons in the nucleus. Each increase by one proton is another element and once you get into the 90+ proton containing elements they become more and more unstable so the chances of other elements existing naturally becomes ever less likely the higher you go up the proton-number and if they do exist it is only for an ever shorter time before they decay to a more stable proton configuration ie to an element, with less protons in the nucleus.

 

If you look at the element with the highest atomic number Ununoctium (118 protons) only 4 nuclei have been detected altogether in the lab and its decay time to livermorium (116 protons) is 0.89 ms.

 

As you can see, the chances of finding new elements are becoming much slimmer all the time.

[Iota]

Just so happened to find this yesterday: http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Neutronium

It's been theorised that an element name Neutronium exists in the core of Neutron Stars. It corresponds to the atomic number zero, hence it is believed to have no protons and is composed only of neutrons.

 

I forgot that you asked for naturally occurring only- but there you go, you might find it interesting anyway.

Edited August 2, 2012 by Iota

[Norbert]

Very interesting, I just learned about something called an island of stability. It is hypothesized, and actually really quite likely, that there are some (1 or 2) elements somewhere down the line with an incredibly large atom BUT that have a (relatively) stable state. This is why they try to smash atoms in particle accelerators, hoping that eventually they will run into a few atoms of a stable element, because the ones they found up until this point are all rather useless due to their high instability. A lot of evidence seems to suggest that one or two may turn out to be incredibly useful due to their very high density, weight, etc.

Edited August 3, 2012 by Norbert

[Iota]

Very interesting, I just learned about something called an island of stability. It is hypothesized, and actually really quite likely, that there are some (1 or 2) elements somewhere down the line with an incredibly large atom BUT that have a (relatively) stable state. This is why they try to smash atoms in particle accelerators, hoping that eventually they will run into a few atoms of a stable element, because the ones they found up until this point are all rather useless due to their high instability. A lot of evidence seems to suggest that one or two may turn out to be incredibly useful due to their very high density, weight, etc.

 

This is news to me too, and very interesting indeed. I'll look into this in some depth; I'm sure it will be used for many, many things if it is found to be stable enough, so fingers crossed. Thanks for passing this information on.

[Moontanman]

Islands of stability is a relative term, they would still be gone in the blink of an eye