Question: do you think there are any undiscovered elements

Katie Marriott answered on 16 Jun 2011:

This is a very hard question to answer! Elements are arranged on the Periodic Table by their atomic number – this is the number of protons an atom has. Elements must have whole numbers of protons, so they cannot have 3 and a half protons. At the moment the Periodic Table has 188 elements arranged in it with atomic numbers from 1 – 118. The heaviest of these element (so they have a higher atomic number) have only been man made, they do not occur naturally. They also do not exist for very long, milliseconds!

There may be elements that are made with a higher atomic number so maybe 119 or 120 but they would definitely be man made and would also have a very short life span. As scientist get better at doing things and discovering new techniques to do these kinds of experiments it is possible that a new element may be discovered!

The last element to be discovered was Ununseptium (atomic number 117) in 2010. There were only 6 atoms made!