Eli5
When new elements get discovered theoretically they tend to be towards the end of the periodic table, why can there not be an element that has 1000 protons, neutrons and electrons ? Or other multiples of each ?
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Because protons are positively charged. Meaning they repel each other. Kind of like two magnets with the same end pointed towards each other.
The only reason atoms stay together is because the nuclear forces are strong enough to hold the protons together. But as the atoms get bigger and bigger and bigger, the nuclear forces start to not be enough and instead the repulsive force of the protons becomes enough to split protons off the nucleus. This is called radioactive decay.
And so far as we can tell, the bigger the nucleus the worse this gets, with atoms decaying rapidly. Hell all of those atoms at the end of the periodic table that have been added in recent years aren’t naturally occurring as far as we can tell, they’ve only been created in labs. And when they are created they only stick around for a fraction of a second before decaying into smaller nuclei.
So yes, hypothetically you could just keep adding protons, but the more you do the harder it is to hold it all together, or even get them together in the first place.
Maybe one day we will discover a super heavy element that is weirdly stable, but that’s not how things seem to be going.
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