Some elements don’t occur naturally and need to be formed artificially / by force by smashing together atoms that would never smash together in nature (in some cases because those atoms in turn also don’t exist in nature).
I suspect chasd00 is making a pedantic point that the atoms are smashing together in nature. Because nature is just everything that happens.
Although pedantic, it does challenge what we really mean when we say "natural". Just like what we mean when we say "chemicals". Everything is chemicals.
No, not everything. Atoms, subatomic particles, light, electromagnetism, etc. are not chemicals. There are many things we experience in everyday life that are not chemicals.
Light isn't chemicals. Sound isn't chemicals, it's the vibration of chemicals. The billions of neutrinos passing through you right now aren't chemicals. Etc. All the matter we interact with in everyday life is chemicals, but lots of things aren't chemicals.
“In nature” means “it would not happen if humans weren’t around”. So no, nature isn’t “everything that happens”. Calcium and californium atoms smashing together to form oganesson would never happen “in nature” without humans using a particle accelerator to drive the process.
I strongly suspect some supernova or black hole jet somewhere has formed oganesson without human intervention. "In nature" usually gets restricted to "on Earth" implicitly, partly for this reason.
Nicely up-pedanted. Ultimately I meant that saying stuff like "I don't want food with chemicals in it" is sloppy, because food itself is made of chemicals.
As a presumptive juror I was once asked how I felt about "chemical evidence". I responded by arguing that pretty much all evidence is chemical evidence. I challenged the room to contradict me (which they could've, but nobody did).
I ended up on the jury, so apparently this performance successfully masked my pro-defense bias.
"Chemical evidence" turned out to mean measurements of pupil dilation as evidence of an inability to drive safely.
