The table of elements shown here has 108 elements. The original table of the elements, credited to Dmitri Mendeleev in 1871, had only 56 elements. (See the original work of Dmitri Mendeleev here.) At that time, scientists were still discovering new elements almost every year. Before the year 1940, it was believed that only 92 elements existed. Element 92 is uranium, the biggest element that occurs naturally on Earth.

In 1940, a new element, plutonium, was created in a laboratory. It is element 94, making it bigger than uranium. As such, it’s highly unstable and unable to exist for very long. All elements above atomic number 92 are created artificially in laboratories, and generally they are extremely unstable and tend to disintegrate rapidly. As such, elements above 92 don’t really exist, except under special laboratory conditions. At least you won’t be finding any in this lifetime.

You might note in the periodic table the mass numbers are in parenthesis for elements 93 and above. The parenthesis are a scientific way of saying this number is guesstimated, at best, and we really don’t know much about these elements because they are artificial and tend to disintegrate rapidly. The elements above 92 are strange, like for example element 115 that was reportedly found at Area 51. There is a Netflix documentary about this topic entitled Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers.

You might find a table of elements showing element 115 or even 118 elements total. We have excluded elements above 108 on this periodic table for the simple reason that the larger elements don’t really exist in the real world.