Why We Can’t Discover a New Chemical Element And Why The Periodic Table Is Set Up The Way It Is

[@merlinminy6871]

Cool video and all but I’d hoped you’d talk about the “why”, you didn’t get into the nucleus instability as A increases. Its more of a tug of war between strong and weak nuclear forces.

[@omnisundae]

Yeah I’m starting to think I should’ve just stuck with explaining the periodic table, I probably don’t know enough to explain the intricacies of the first section 🥲

[@petersmythe6462]

Ok, at the section on stability: 1. Most of the isotopes of heavy elements we've made in labs are neutron poor compared to the likely most stable isotope of the same element. The heaviest isotope to decay by electron emission that we know of is element 101, Mendelevium-260, but we do expect heavier elements to decay by this mode. We just haven't been able to get sufficiently neutron rich material to fuse them. The fact that our heaviest isotopes are all substantially neutron poor means that we don't actually know how long the most stable isotope of those elements would last. 2. There have been predictions of an island of stability, where isotopes with much longer halflives could exist even beyond the known periodic table. Probably not strictly stable, but potentially longer than the 52 days that the longest lived isotope of Mendelevium lasts, and as I described above, we can't take the neutron poor isotopes of heavier elements as representative of how long their most stable isotopes would last.

[@omnisundae]

Super cool, I really appreciate the corrections. Considering Uranium’s half life is somewhere around ten million to a billion years and that’s still kinda dangerous, do you think anything with a 50-100 day half life has any chance of being useful? Does it have to do with the decay mode?

[@azophyte]

"We've basically discovered all the elements that could possibly be of any use so there's no possibility of finding a new element of new properties" Scientists are currently working towards element 119 and beyond though? Also there is a very real chance that some elements exist within an island of stability, where they start getting more stable again. One of these may exist at 126 - it probably will be radioactive, but stable enough to be studied or even manufactured in the distant future.

[@omnisundae]

I’ve never heard of that but big if true 😳 I’ll have to do more research on it

[@PedroGelabert777]

This is a very good summary of the basic principles behind the periodic table. 🙌🏻🙌🏻

[@Usera.rt3]

There is always the possibility of elements that don’t use protons as well! Like neutron matter and dark matter!

[@rafaellima6383]

what about the theorized island of stability? would those elements just be obscenely radioactive or something?