Periodic table been slowly expanded and refined with the discovery or synthesis of further new elements and the development of new theoretical models to explain chemical behaviour. The modern periodic table now provides a useful framework for analyzing chemical reactions, and continues to be widely used in chemistry, nuclear physics and other sciences. All the elements from atomic numbers 1 (hydrogen) through 118 (oganesson) have been either discovered or synthesized, completing the first seven rows of the periodic table. The first 98 elements exist in nature, although some are found only in trace amounts and others were synthesized in laboratories before being
Periodic table element 172, rather than element 168, that emerges as the next noble gas after oganesson, although these must be regarded as speculative as no complete calculations have been done beyond element 122. The number of possible elements is not known. A very early suggestion made by Elliot Adams in 1911, and based on the arrangement of elements in each horizontal periodic table row, was that elements of atomic weight greater than circa 256 (which would equate to between elements 99 and 100 in modern-day terms) did not exist. A higher—more recent—estimate is that the periodic table may end soon after