Question

Can you give me information about undiscovered elements?

There are no undiscovered stable elements, but there may be a few partially stable elements that could still be synthesized in big nuclear accelerators. As scientists in the early 20th century developed a detailed understanding of the periodic table of the elements based on the structure of atoms, all of the naturally occurring elements (even those with very low abundance) could be filled in and their properties estimated, even before they were all found in nature. In the second half of the 20th century, nuclear physicists explored the so-called transuranium elements, those beyond element 92 that are naturally radioactive (unstable) and thus are not found in nature. Many of these were then manufactured. The elements from 100 up to about 112 have extremely short lifetimes (much less than 1 second) and would be very difficult to make or detect. There are apparently several elements near 115 that have longer lifetimes, at least several minutes, but these have so far been synthesized only in extremely small amounts -- just a few atoms.

David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist
10 February 2004
January 26, 2004