Originally Posted by
wilson_smyth
4 new elements were added to the periodic table in 2016, only 4 years ago. Prior to that, would you have thought the table contained all elements in the universe?
The table contains all common elements we are currently aware of, but it's arrogant to think we've discovered them all. Even at that it doesn't contain all elements so the initial comment is incorrect.
We know a lot more now than we did 250 years ago, when the table contained no elements as it didn't exist. Imagine what will be known in the next 250 years.
Imagine the new elements that will be discovered in conditions we don't yet know exists. Imagine some of those super unstable elements with tiny half lives may become useful in tech we have not even imagined yet.
Tldr:the original statement that thr periodic table Contains all elements in the universe is incorrect.
I have never said that the periodic table is written in stone. It is a living tool that has constantly been added to since before it was even conceived. It contains all the material we know and it has the ability to contain all the material we don’t. We could even predict the properties of elements we don’t know.
Dmitri Mendeleev, who developed the periodic table, predicted 3 elements in 1869...gallium, scandium, and germanium and their properties...before they were found. They were found within 20 years of his predictions and had almost exactly the properties he predicted. In total, he predicted at total of 10 elements. We can still use the periodic table to predict elements and what their properties are.
And those 4 elements added 4 years ago were decades in the making. They didn’t just “find” 4 new elements in 2016. Experiments demonstrated that the elements existed but none of the experiments nor the elements that were made were simple nor easy to perform nor interpret. And while there many be examples of these elements (as well as others) in the universe, the conditions under which they exist are going to be very different from what we experience.
Nor, for various reasons, are superheavy elements going to account for the gravitational problem for which dark matter is postulated. You might find these kinds of elements in very dense stars with huge gravitational wells but those kinds of stars aren’t prevalent enough to fit the dark matter model. We don’t see the kinds of gravitational lensing to account for a whole bunch of super heavy stars.
Tldr: the original statement is absolutely correct.
Last edited by cyccommute; 03-22-21 at 10:19 PM.