Extended periodic table The next six elements on the periodic table should be the last main-group elements in their period. In elements 167 to 172, the 9p and 8p shells will be filled. Their energy eigenvalues are so close together that they behave as one combined "p" shell, similar to the non-relativistic 2p and 3p shells. Thus, the inert pair effect does not occur and the most common oxidation states of elements 167 to 170 should be +3, +4, +5, and +6 respectively. Element 171 (unseptunium) is expected to show some similarities to the halogens, showing various oxidation states ranging from −1 to
Extended periodic table than "Z" = 137, on the grounds that the relativistic Dirac equation predicts that the ground-state energy of the innermost electron in such an atom would be an imaginary number. Here, the number 137 arises as the inverse of the fine-structure constant. By this argument, neutral atoms cannot exist beyond untriseptium (alternatively called "feynmanium"), and therefore a periodic table of elements based on electron orbitals breaks down at this point. However, this argument presumes that the atomic nucleus is pointlike. A more accurate calculation must take into account the small, but nonzero, size of the nucleus, which is predicted to