WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF EVERY ELEMENT ON THE PERIODIC TABLE CAME INTO CONTACT SIMULTANEOUSLY?

The first method would require energy equivalent to dozens of Large Hadron Colliders-an impressive and extremely treacherous experiment indeed. The second method would be putting together a chunk of each element and observe what happens.Both, however, would eventually create carbon monoxide and a pile of rust and salts rather than a cool Frankenstein element.

Atoms are made up of a nucleus of neutrons and protons with a set number of electrons circling around them. Molecules form when atoms’ electron orbital’s overlap and effectively hold the atoms together. What you get when you mix all your atoms will be influenced by what’s close to what. Oxygen, for example, is very reactive, and if it is closest to hydrogen, it will make hydroxide. If it is nearest to carbon, it will make carbon monoxide. Certain elements, such as the noble gases, wouldn't react with anything, so you'd be left with those and a few commonly found two- and three-atom molecules.

Ramming the atoms together at 99.999 percent the speed of light—the top speed of particles in the Large Hadron Collider, at the CERN particlephysics lab near Geneva—might fuse a few nuclei, but it won't make that cool Frankenstein element. More likely, they would meld into a quark-gluon plasma, the theoretical matter that existed right after the universe formed.