How are we continuing to discover new chemical processes? Should we not have tried all combinations of one column or period? What factor allows us to constantly find more efficient elements or processes?
In: Chemistry
Element is made by smashing smaller atoms together in particle accelerators. It is a nuclear physic reaction, not a chemical reaction. Chemistry is between atoms not changes in the nucleus of atoms, that is nuclear physics.
We know that you can have atoms with more protons than the ones that exist naturally or we have made. The problem is to make them. The new we discover now ar very unstable and decay quickly but there might element with even more protons that are stable.
There is 114 know element lets say 80 is “common”. You would only have 80*80 =6400 combinations. But that is only if you have 2 atoms in a molecule. There is often more atoms and there is any way you can combine them in different physical structures
If you look at complex molecules like proteins they are made of strings of amino acids. You can have 100s of amino acids in a row. Humans use at least 20 amino acids.
So the number of proteins with 100 amino acids and 20 alternative is 20^100 = 1*10^130 That is 1 with 130 zeros after. The estimation of atoms in the observable universe is 10^82 so we talk about 10^50 possible combinations per atom in the known universe. That is the estimated number of atoms in earth.
So there is a limited number of simple combinations but you create more complex chemicals you quickly reach a combination that is impossible for humanity to ever test all even if we exist for billions of years and colonize the whole galaxy.
There are about a hundred elements, but there are millions of known compounds, all with their own properties. So there are trillions and trillions of further possible combinations.
Molecules aren’t just A + B = C. Many are A + B + C + D, or A + A + B + C. And A + A + B is different to A + B + A, because order is also important.
And organic molecules, which is where most chemical research now takes place, can contain hundreds of atoms.
And that’s just building one molecule. You then have to react it with every other molecule you have in every possible combination in every possible environmental condition (ie, temperature and pressure variation) and concentration ratio.
Although there are only a limited number of elements, there are functionally infinite ways of combining them in “a chemical process”.
Think off elements like letters of the alphabet. They can be combined in far more ways than you can imagine. Most random combinations are not interesting (like nonsense words), but occasionally someone develops a new combination that is useful.
It’s a bit more complex than writing, which is just adding letter after letter to get the word you want. Chemists know how easily to make some molecules (i.e. words), and they have tricks to add other molecules (prefixes or suffixes). They have tricks that cut molecules into pieces (taking a word you know, and keeping only part of it to form another new word).
There’s many reasons for this.
First, the technological limitations. Some processes have not been possible before because we could not create the required environment, be it that we could not create enough pressure, the right environmental situation or the required purity of the ingredients.
Second, it’s not just “Add A to B and presto, new thing”. Some molecules are really, really tricky (just take a look at a protein if you dare), and with some of the biological stuff we don’t even know yet how to create them artificially, let alone create them. For some it’s that even if we could make them, we didn’t realize yet how to toss the stuff together, cook it, cool it, press it and whatever other hoops one has to jump through to make them come together at JUST the right spots to be in the end what we want them to. Putting a certain atom at a different part of another atom can fundamentally change the outcome, especially in organic chemistry the place where you attach something on a benzene ring can be the difference between medicine and deadly poison, despite being the same atoms. Just arranged differently.
The comparison someone else in the thread made is pretty apt. Yes, we have discovered all the letters in the alphabet, but that doesn’t mean we know all the words. It’s even more complicated than that . A more apt comparison would be that we know all the letters in the alphabet, but that doesn’t mean we have made every crossword puzzle that could ever been made.
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