• Question: Would it be possible to find another element or have all possible elements been found?

    Asked by Noodlemeister to Joe, Jos, Kate, Lisa, Pierre on 14 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Kate Dobson

      Kate Dobson answered on 14 Nov 2014:

      Well, there are some elements that we think exist but we’ve never actually seen them. The most recent “discovery” was for element 117 which was confirmed earlier this year. The heavier elements are usually very unstable, so in fact it is usually the decay products (the daughter elements) that people observe rather than the heavier element itself.

      Apparently (I looked this up) some people think that the heaviest element can only have 137 protons, and the for an element to be bigger/heavier would need the electrons that surround the nucleus to move at speeds higher than the speed of light (which is, of course impossible). At the moment the heaviest atom we have created is the (unnamed) element 118 (118 protons)

    • Photo: Lisa Simmons

      Lisa Simmons answered on 15 Nov 2014:

      I’m not sure if we’ll find any more elements, anything is possible. One thing that I do look at is how the alloys that we understand well can still exist in different ways that we didn’t know. I try to make and understand these unknown phases, hopefully in the end to use them for a greater good

Comments

  • Photo: Kate

    Kate commented on :

    I’m not sure about this, but I think the maximum theoretical temperature is the Planck temperature, which is (I just checked the value) 141,678,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 K or 1,41678×10*32 kelvin. But apparently there are two other contenders as well; the Hagedorn temperature (with is about 100 x colder than the Plank temperature) and another temperature 1000 x colder again. The hottest temperature ever seen though are somewhere about 25,000 degrees C

    I found this quote from Jim Gates ; “All we know is that above the Planck temperature, the rules change, but … we don’t know what the rules change to” which I kind of like. Maybe one of you will be the one to work out what those rules are. The probably controlled what happened in the first 10-43 seconds of the universe (that’s the first 0.0000000.000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001 seconds of the Universe’s history)

  • Photo: niamhyy_bratzz_barbie_disney

    niamhyy_bratzz_barbie_disney commented on :

    Very Interesting.

  • Photo: Kate

    Kate commented on :

    sorry, noodlemeister, that comment shoudl ahve been an answer to a different question – I wondered where it had gone…. 🙂