• Question: Do you think that there any more elements that have not been found yet?

    Asked by anon-224970 to Simon, Selen, Paul, Nawapat, Natalie, Katy on 14 Nov 2019. This question was also asked by anon-224972.
    • Photo: Simon Brown

      Simon Brown answered on 14 Nov 2019:


      Yes, possibly, but they will have such a stupid short life, it will be perceived in nanoseconds and observed under the most extreme conditions. There might be isotopes of existing elements yet to be discovered.

    • Photo: Paul Laurance-Young

      Paul Laurance-Young answered on 14 Nov 2019:


      Quite possibly…

    • Photo: Nawapat Kaweeyanun

      Nawapat Kaweeyanun answered on 16 Nov 2019:


      Simon has a good answer here. Chemists are making new elements all the time, but they are very short-lived (large atoms are not stable in general) so they are unlikely to be much of use in daily life.

    • Photo: Katy Bruce

      Katy Bruce answered on 17 Nov 2019:


      I’m with the others on this one – I’m sure it would be possible for scientists to further add to the periodic table but I’m not convinced they would be much use. It wouldn’t necessarily be a case of “finding” them, more “creating” them, as they wouldn’t be naturally occurring elements.

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