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Material has come to Earth from deep space (beyond cis-linar) and been subjected to scientific analysis both in the form of meteorites, and via robotic sample collection spacecraft and robotic analytical spacecraft and landers.

Question: What is the heaviest chemical element that has been recovered from deep space and identified? For example, uranium is an important component of Earth and it plus thorium are responsible for half of the heat coming from the Earth itself. It's not hard to find in the Earth's crust if you know where to look for it. But has meteoric dust, space dust, or other bodies robitically sampled show signs of uranium or heavier?

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    $\begingroup$ Welcome to stack exchange. This is an interesting question, I think, although it could do with a little editing, but it is about astronomy and not space exploration. I suggest that you ask it on the astronomy stack exchange. First though you should check that nothing similar has been asked already. $\endgroup$
    – Steve Linton
    Commented Sep 13, 2019 at 12:54
  • $\begingroup$ I've edited to make the question more on-topic, voting to re-open. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Commented Sep 13, 2019 at 14:16
  • $\begingroup$ Certainly not the heaviest, but one of the most interesting, is nitrogen in Martian soil. Ciriosity identified nitrates, which would provide biologically available nitrogen for past or present organisms. $\endgroup$
    – Oscar Lanzi
    Commented Sep 13, 2019 at 17:11
  • $\begingroup$ uhoh, yes, i'm against editing, but your redaction have ideas- star dust, age of creation of heavy elements against the age of creating light elements. so they will only be created in the distant future. and I didn’t get an answer, but how to find them on the earth? if they are already here? how do scientists do it or can do it, for example, in pure Antarctica, where there is only water and ice? $\endgroup$
    – nexoma
    Commented Sep 13, 2019 at 18:02
  • $\begingroup$ so, if you can transfer to another section - do it. $\endgroup$
    – nexoma
    Commented Sep 13, 2019 at 18:03

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That's unlikely. Anything beyond Uranium is unstable, and the heavier an element becomes, the more unstable it gets. Since anything that gets to us from deep space has to travel for a long time to get to Earth, anything interesting will have decayed long before it gets to us.

Many of the elements at the bottom of the Periodic Table have been synthesized in a lab, and live for seconds before they fall apart. There's an island of stability where elements have longer halflives than their neighbors, but 'longer' is a relative term here.

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  • $\begingroup$ yes, i mean that is possible en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability $\endgroup$
    – nexoma
    Commented Sep 13, 2019 at 13:06
  • $\begingroup$ I've gone out on a limb and edited the question to make it more on-topic. Rather than row-eight, I've asked for the heaviest element that has been identified. I know it's not a good idea to edit a question when an answer has been posted, if you're uncomfortable with the change please feel free to roll back. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Commented Sep 13, 2019 at 14:18
  • $\begingroup$ I would not close out, that the very few samples we've got until now, contained some atoms of plutonium, too. $\endgroup$
    – peterh
    Commented Sep 13, 2019 at 15:46

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