Someone told me that there is a limit to the number of trans uranium elements that can be in the periodic table. His reasoning was that when the number of electrons for an element gets big enough, the electrons in the outer shell will be so far out that they will have to travel faster than the speed of light to orbit the nucleus. Could he be right?
In: 22
There is a lot of unknown physics about very heavy elements. We don’t really know where it stops or have a solid way of predicting the patterns of stability.
The consensus theory right now says that elements go on forever, with islands of stability that get increasingly rare as mass goes up.
I find your friend’s comment about electrons dubious because the stability of an isotope generally doesn’t have anything to do with its electron shell. Ions form readily and are stable and electrons do not contribute to nuclear interactions between protons and neutrons.
Less salient, I also find his take about impossible speed dubious. Anything, including an electron, can gain arbitrary amounts of momentum without exceeding the speed of light – that’s the whole point of Special Relativity.
Latest Answers