how many new elements are left for anyone to discover?

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SPEAKER 1

Do you know how in sci-fi someone finds an alien textbook or hologram, recognizes it as their version of the periodic table of elements, and then discovers that they know hundreds if not thousands of elements while we only know 118, or however many we did when the author googled it?

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146.

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SPEAKER 1

There are currently only 111 elements on the periodic table. Only 90 when I last looked. Turn the page. What? Turn the page. Are you saying that this, this is, this is like a book? Well, about that. You see, physics and chemistry don't really work that way.

how many new elements are left for anyone to discover?

There are exotic new chemicals left to be added to the periodic table. But how many? And what limits does the universe put on them?

Aug 23, 2024

A common trope in science fiction and UFO conspiracy theories is that aliens or lost civilizations discovered elements that we simply don’t have on the periodic table yet, allowing them to do whatever weird, unlikely, or even downright impossible thing they were supposedly doing. But how plausible is this? A lot of these elements need to be super-heavy, and that makes the whole concept very problematic given the dynamics of subatomic elements and fundamental forces…

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SPEAKER 1

There are currently only 111 elements on the periodic table. Only 90 when I last looked. Turn the page. What? Turn the page. Are you saying that this, this is, this is like a book? Well, about that. You see, physics and chemistry don't really work that way.