Extended periodic table table. The table below shows one possibility for the appearance of the eighth period, with placement of elements primarily based on their predicted chemistry. All of these hypothetical undiscovered elements are named by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) systematic element name standard which creates a generic name for use until the element has been discovered, confirmed, and an official name approved. These names are typically not used in the literature, and are referred to by their atomic numbers; hence, element 164 would usually not be called "unhexquadium" (the IUPAC systematic name), but rather "element 164" with
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