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Of the 26 "monoisotopic" elements that have only a single stable isotope, all but one have an odd atomic number—the single exception being beryllium. In addition, no odd-numbered element has more than two stable isotopes, while every even-numbered element with stable isotopes, except for helium, beryllium, and carbon, has at least three.
Even so, as physicists started to synthesize elements that are not found in nature, they found the stability decreased as the nuclei became heavier. [17] Thus, they speculated that the periodic table might come to an end. The discoverers of plutonium (element 94) considered naming it "ultimium", thinking it was the last. [18]
Of the known chemical elements, 80 elements have at least one stable nuclide. These comprise the first 82 elements from hydrogen to lead, with the two exceptions, technetium (element 43) and promethium (element 61), that do not have any stable nuclides. As of 2024, there are total of 251 known "stable" nuclides.
The stable elements plus bismuth, thorium, and uranium make up the 83 primordial elements that survived from the Earth's formation. [c] The remaining eleven natural elements decay quickly enough that their continued trace occurrence rests primarily on being constantly regenerated as intermediate products of the decay of thorium and uranium.
This page lists radioactive nuclides by their half-life.
The following table gives the crystalline structure of the most thermodynamically stable form(s) for elements that are solid at standard temperature and pressure.Each element is shaded by a color representing its respective Bravais lattice, except that all orthorhombic lattices are grouped together.
The heaviest stable element, lead (Pb), has many more neutrons than protons. The stable nuclide 206 Pb has Z = 82 and N = 124, for example. For this reason, the valley of stability does not follow the line Z = N for A larger than 40 ( Z = 20 is the element calcium ). [ 3 ]
The island of stability is a hypothetical region in the top right cluster of nuclides that contains isotopes far more stable than other transuranic elements. There are no stable nuclides having an equal number of protons and neutrons in their nuclei with atomic number greater than 20 (i.e. calcium) as can be readily observed from the chart ...