A period 8 element is any one of 46 hypothetical chemical elements (ununennium through unhexquadium) belonging to an eighth period of the periodic table of the elements. They may be referred to using IUPAC systematic element names. None of these elements have been synthesized, and it is possible that none have isotopes with stable enough nuclei to receive significant attention in the near future. It is also probable that, due to drip instabilities, only the lower period 8 elements are physically possible and the periodic table may end soon after the island of stability at unbihexium with atomic number 126. The names given to these unattested elements are all IUPAC systematic names.
If it were possible to produce sufficient quantities of sufficiently long-lived isotopes of these elements that would allow the study of their chemistry, these elements may well behave very differently from those of previous periods. This is because their electronic configurations may be altered by quantum and relativistic effects, as the energy levels of the 5g, 6f, 7d and 8p1/2 orbitals are so close to each other that they may well exchange electrons with each other. This would result in a large number of elements in the superactinide series that would have extremely similar chemical properties that would be quite unrelated to elements of lower atomic number.
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