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Comment on Is the periodic table still getting new additions?

The elements at the very end of the periodic table are somewhat tenuous as we know "elements" to be, as there has only ever been very VERY small amounts of this material produced, and the isotopes of those materials that ARE produced split apart almost immediately with insanely small half-lives, so it's not like there's any amount of it just kicking around in a jar somewhere in some lab.

There's a ton of interesting reading on the theoretical island of stability in superheavy elements
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability

I think there are elements theorized up to around atomic number 125 or 127. Currently the highest confirmed, named, and somewhat categorized is 118.

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trolololol@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
When you say macroscopic time are we talking about seconds or years? Wondering whether we can actually build a circuit or something if we could produce a few mg of it.

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- Bags@piefed.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It depends on which theorist you talk to. Some say seconds to minutes, others say days to weeks, the nutcases say thousands to millions of years.
  
  And at the end of the day, the electrical properties of these elements probably aren't that interesting or useful, and almost certainly won't be like, semiconductors or anything fun. Just dumb, heavy, really fucking radioactive wire lol.
  
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  - AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    As long as it could be thousands of years we can dream about fantastic new elements that could make arc reactors or interstellar travel possible.
    
    The more likely reality is a boring line of research of interest only to scientists
    
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TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
See also: chart of nuclides

It contains the periodic table and all the unstable isotopes of every element. The island of stability would be somewhere in the top right corner, outside the chart.

When you look at the half-life data, it’s pretty clear that lead is the last fully stable element. Anything past that line (126 neutrons) is more or less unstable, but not necessarily useless. For example, uranium and thorium are pretty far away, but they can still have practical applications.

Between hydrogen and lead, stable isotopes are abundant, but after lead, finding anything you can reasonably do chemistry with gets a bit scarce. When you go past plutonium 244, you’ll find even less chemistry there.

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