[Chris11]

Hello! I was just wondering why N₂ is considered to be a noble gas as well. I have read it in a encyclopedia but it didn't really explain why. The only thing it said was that it's very stable and has a low chance to react in normal conditions due to their triple bond. But wouldn't that mean that Phosphorus would also have these properties (IF P₂ exists of course, I'm not sure about that either haha)?

Thank you for your answers and sorry for wasting your time

[vmelkon]

It isn't a noble gas. Dictionaries and encyclopediaes are sometimes wrong.
That's correct, N2 doesn't react with much in room temperature conditions.

Phosphorus is different. Probably MOT can explain it. It has a few allotropes. White P burns with O2 at room temp.
According to wikipedia, "This P4 tetrahedron is also present in liquid and gaseous phosphorus up to the temperature of 800 °C when it starts decomposing to P2 molecules"

so perhaps in the gas phase, at the bp, you already have some P2. As temp goes up, the equilibrium shifts to the right
P4 <=> 2 P2

[DevaDevil]

I have heard nitrogen called an inert gas many times (while that technically isn't correct either, it is true that it can be considered inert at room temperature), but the definition noble gas is only reserved to the elements in the final column of the periodic table.