[Karen W. (OP)]

I mean to ask weather or not in all our explorations of other planets, what elements if any we have found on them which we cannot find here on earth? Does that make sense?

I want to say Why of course there is they are different planets and what makes them up are obviously different as we have life on ours.. LOL!

Please set me straight as to what we have found that may be different ..or not found here at all!

This Question does not bode well for me and makes me look as though it were me from another planet! LOL!

[syhprum]

I am pretty sure there are no natrualy occuring elements yet to be discovered but it is possible that some will occure more abundently than they do on Earth.
It has been suggested that Helium 3 is less rare on the Moon than it is here but I don't know what the evidence is.

[RD]

An element which was discovered on an astronomical body other than Earth, is Helium.

Evidence of helium was first detected on August 18, 1868 as a bright yellow line with a wavelength of 587.49 nanometres in the spectrum of the chromosphere of the Sun, by French astronomer Pierre Janssen during a total solar eclipse in Guntur, India. This line was initially assumed to be sodium. On October 20 of the same year, English astronomer Norman Lockyer observed a yellow line in the solar spectrum, which he named the D3 line, for it was near the known D1 and D2 lines of sodium,[14] and concluded that it was caused by an element in the Sun unknown on Earth. He and English chemist Edward Frankland named the element with the Greek word for the Sun, ἥλιος (helios)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium

Helium does exist on Earth, but was first discovered in the Sun's atmosphere.

There will probably be compounds which can exist on the surface of other planets but not naturally
on Earth because of the differences in surface temperature and pressure.

[Karen W. (OP)]

An element which was discovered on an astronomical body other than Earth, is Helium.

Evidence of helium was first detected on August 18, 1868 as a bright yellow line with a wavelength of 587.49 nanometres in the spectrum of the chromosphere of the Sun, by French astronomer Pierre Janssen during a total solar eclipse in Guntur, India. This line was initially assumed to be sodium. On October 20 of the same year, English astronomer Norman Lockyer observed a yellow line in the solar spectrum, which he named the D3 line, for it was near the known D1 and D2 lines of sodium,[14] and concluded that it was caused by an element in the Sun unknown on Earth. He and English chemist Edward Frankland named the element with the Greek word for the Sun, ἥλιος (helios)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium

Helium does exist on Earth, but was first discovered in the Sun's atmosphere.

There will probably be compounds which can exist on the surface of other planets but not naturally
on Earth because of the differences in surface temperature and pressure.

Well when You say that theycan exist on the surface of other planets but NOT

naturally on Earth, Do you mean that they could be introduced here and perhaps exist if

things were altered in a way as to make it more like the surface it came from?

[Karen W. (OP)]

I am pretty sure there are no natrualy occuring elements yet to be discovered but it is possible that some will occure more abundently than they do on Earth.
It has been suggested that Helium 3 is less rare on the Moon than it is here but I don't know what the evidence is.

Thanks Syhprum! I did not know that about Helium thank you too Rd. So

Originally from the sun then..... The hellium that is?

[DrDick]

Actually, most helium on earth is formed from decay of radioactive elements.  An alpha particle (from alpha-decay) is simply a helium nucleus.  Once it picks up electrons from something, it becomes a helium atom.

Assuming our understanding of the atom (the atomic theory) is correct, it's impossible to have other light elements (ignoring different isotopes of known elements).  Heavier elements might be formed in stellar explosions, but these are very unstable and tend to decay fairly rapidly, so would be unlikely to be found except in a very new system.

However, I have heard that some scientists theorize that there may be an "island of stability" at very high atomic numbers.  Depending on how stable these are, it might be possible that these could be found someday.  Even if they can't be made by stellar explosions, it might be possible that advanced technology can do what nature can't.


Dick

[Karen W. (OP)]

That would be interesting! If they are bouncing around the ideas, perhaps they
May some day be able to do something with it! Thanks Dick

[lyner]

I don't think anyone has made the obvious point, here, that  there is no space in the 'system' for any more chemical elements to exist - in as far as an atom must have an integral number of protons (and that defines what element it is).
The only likelihood  of other elements is ones with huge numbers of  protons- the transuranium elements. These are very unstable, so they only last a very short time after they have been formed, for instance, in a star or nuclear explosion. I guess someone might find a super nucleus that happens to be relatively stable - (there is an analogy with carbon 14  a formation of carbon atoms - which was a brand new discovery not long ago), but it's not the sort of thing you'd pick up from the surface of some distant planet.
Planets in different orbital positions tend to have wildly different percentage compositions - because of the vaguaries of planetary formation but they will probably all contain at least a bit of everything. The 'gas giants' - Jupiter etc. are thought to have small rocky cores, full of iron and stuff.

[another_someone]

http://arxivblog.com/?p=385

The hunt for superheavy elements has focused banging various heavy nuclei together and hoping they’ll stick. In this way, physicists have extended the periodic table by manufacturing elements 111, 112, 114, 116 and 118, albeit for vanishingly small instants. Although none of these elements is particularly long lived, they don’t have progressively shorter lives and this is taken as evidence that islands of nuclear stability exist out there and that someday we’ll find stable superheavy elements.

But if these superheavy nuclei are stable, why don’t we find them already on Earth? Turns out we do; they’ve been here all along. The news today is that a group led by Amnon Marinov at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has found the first naturally occuring superheavy nuclei by sifting through a large pile of the heavy metal thorium.

What they did was fire one thorium nucleus after another through a mass spectrometer to see how heavy each was. Thorium has an atomic number of 90 and occurs mainly in two isotopes with atomic weights of 230 and 232. All these showed up in the measurements along with a various molecular oxides and hydrides that form for technical reasons.

But something else showed up too. An element with a weight of 292 and an atomic number of around 122. That’s an extraordinary claim and quite rightly the team has been diligent in attempting to exclude alternative explanations such as th epresence of exotic molecules formed from impurities in the thorium sample or from the hydrocarbon in oil used in the vacuum pumping equipment). But these have all been ruled out, say Marinov and his buddies.

What they’re left with is the discovery of the first superheavy element, probably number 122.

What do we know about 122? Marinov and co say it has a half life in excess of 100 million years and occurs with an abundance of between 1 and 10 x10^-12, relative to thorium, which is a fairly common element (about as abundant as lead).

Theorists have mapped out the superheavy periodic table and 122 would be a member of the superheavy actinide group. It even has a name: eka-thorium or unbibium. Welcome to our world!

This may well open the flood gates to other similar discoveries. Uranium is the obvious next place to look for superheavy actinides. I’d bet good money that Marinov and his pals are eyeballing the stuff as I write.

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.3869.pdf

[LeeE]

http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/elements.htm

[rosalind dna]

Interesting and is this the same kind of helium that is used to make the big balloons get afloat?
The sort of balloons to take a trip in and not like Branson did

[another_someone]

Interesting and is this the same kind of helium that is used to make the big balloons get afloat?
The sort of balloons to take a trip in and not like Branson did

If by that you are referring to ³He, then it would be too rare for that use (some ³He might well be mixed in with the more common ⁴He they used, but very very little).