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?
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First, electrons don’t really orbit the nucleus like that. They don’t travel around the nucleus, they “orbit” in stationary standing waves called orbitals.
Second, even if electrons did move in circular orbits, that wouldn’t have any effect on whether or not the element could exist. Elements are defined based on the number of protons in the nucleus, not on how many if any electrons are orbiting that nucleus.
Finally, yes, there is a “limit” to the number of transuranic elements that can exist, but it’s not due to electrons. It’s due to the nucleus itself being unstable. There’s an arbitrary minimum lifetime of 10^-14 seconds before decay that an element must live to be considered to actually exist as an element by scientists. Above a certain size, nuclei just aren’t stable enough to live that long.
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