I learned from one of my teachers that empirically reaction with order greater that 3 are never found. But, I am suspicious of the truth value of his claim.
To add to my suspicion there is this paper from 1932 referring to a fourth-order reaction
It seems to me theoretically there should be no upper limit for a reaction as it is possible for 4,5,6... chemical species to come together with the right activation energy in the right direction.
However, empirically making 4 or 5 chemical species to form a transition species is very hard. So, there should be a empirical limit to order of reaction in the light of chemistry we know today.
What is this limit?
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