Template talk:Infobox oganesson

"predicted to be a noble gas"
...does not seem to comply with WP:DUE when the sources in the article itself are mainly saying it won't be one. --Jasper Deng (talk) 16:53, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The question is, what can you call it? Even if it is not noble it is almost certainly monatomic, after all. Besides, I think we go too far in interpreting the sources, which usually simply claim that (a) oganesson would be a homologue of the rare gases He to Rn and (b) it would actually be more reactive than one might expect. (Fricke, for example, IIRC called it a "very bad noble gas", but still one.) Double sharp (talk) 01:53, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Would it be a homologue if it's predicted to be solid? There is significant discussion in the flerovium article about it possibly showing noble gas-like properties.
 * What if we changed the wording to "probably"? This is a weaker assertion than "predicted to be", in my opinion.--Jasper Deng (talk) 07:20, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Why not? (Besides, the melting and boiling point predictions do differ slightly among the sources; Fricke still predicts it to be a gas, although just barely with a boiling point of 263 K IIRC.) "Probably" should be fine. Double sharp (talk) 07:30, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Edited to give "probably". Double sharp (talk) 07:32, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

I guess some of this depends on what you think "noble gas" means; does it actually have to be noble and a gas, or just be in group 18? (Note that Rn is already definitely not "noble" in the sense that Ar is; there have been serious proposals to remove it from poorly ventilated uranium mines by reacting it away to form involatile compounds, although given that the reagents needed to do it include ClF3 this idea hasn't exactly gotten off the ground.) If you look at this report on some recent calculations, you see that while theoretical chemist Peter Schwerdtfeger (who was involved in the calculations) says "According to our prediction, oganesson is not a gas but a solid at room temperature", he also implicitly calls it a "rare gas": "But oganesson is quite different to the other rare gas atoms, as its shells are barely visible in an ELF plot." (Other of course implies that Og is among them.) Given that the concept of a noble gas (or rare gas) as an element in group 18 is sound for He through Xe, and Rn and especially Og are pretty much footnotes to an inorganic chemistry textbook, I think it's likely that Og would be considered part of the family purely out of convenience, but it's far too early to say since we still can't do chemistry on it. (Here's hoping that 2018 brings us some news about the JINR's experiments aimed at making heavier and longer-lived Og isotopes!) Double sharp (talk) 13:35, 2 January 2018 (UTC)