The number of possible chemicals is estimated to be between 10^18 and 10^200, with diatomic hydrogen being the most abundant compound in the universe. Only 94 of the 117 known elements occur naturally, with CHONPS making up over 99% of all living organisms and chemical compounds. Biological compounds can form long chains and have almost unlimited variations. The total number of stable compounds with up to eleven atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and fluorine is estimated to be around 18 billion, but this number may be much lower.
There are a huge number of possible chemicals. Estimates range from 1018 to 10200. For comparison the number of grains of sand on Earth is about 7.5 x 1018, the number of particles in the universe is between 1072 and 1087. Clearly, if there are indeed more chemicals of this, then not everyone even physically exists in the universe. However, the most abundant compound in the universe, by far, is diatomic hydrogen (H2).
Of the 117 known elements, only 94 occur naturally, and seven of these are noble gases, which form compounds only under very unusual conditions, such as when exposed to electron bombardment. This leaves 87 more elements to form chemical compounds, and most of these don’t form many, nor are they very abundant.
The most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen (74%), helium (24%), oxygen (10%), carbon (0.46%), neon (0.13%), iron (0.1%) and nitrogen (0.1%). . Helium and neon are noble gases and do not bind to anything. Iron is mainly locked up in iron oxide (rust). The others – carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen – are known by the acronym CHON and, together with phosphorus and sulfur, make up 99% of all living organisms and over 99% of all chemical compounds. These are called biological compounds.
Biological compounds can form long chains in ways that inorganic compounds cannot. These compounds can be billions of atoms long, in the case of biopolymers such as DNA. These molecules can have small differences in just a few atoms, such as the genetic material of identical twins who have slight mutations from copying errors or radiation exposure. This produces an almost unlimited number of variations.
In 2005, a group from the University of Bern in Switzerland set out to determine the total number of stable compounds with up to eleven atoms of just carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and fluorine. Their number was just under 18 billion, but a later analysis found that they were ignorant of many common chemicals, including many that could be easily ordered online, and the number may have been as low as three orders of magnitude. Even looking at just small chemicals, there’s still an absolutely huge number of variations.
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