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This is a list of radioactive nuclides (sometimes also called isotopes), ordered by half-life from shortest to longest, in seconds, minutes, hours, days and years. Current methods make it difficult to measure half-lives between approximately 10 −19 and 10 −10 seconds. [1]
There is a half-life describing any exponential-decay process. For example: As noted above, in radioactive decay the half-life is the length of time after which there is a 50% chance that an atom will have undergone nuclear decay. It varies depending on the atom type and isotope, and is usually determined experimentally. See List of nuclides.
At least 3,300 nuclides have been experimentally characterized [1] (see List of radioactive nuclides by half-life for the nuclides with decay half-lives less than one hour). A nuclide is defined conventionally as an experimentally examined bound collection of protons and neutrons that either is stable or has an observed decay mode .
Natural iron (26 Fe) consists of four stable isotopes: 5.845% 54 Fe (possibly radioactive with half-life > 4.4 × 10 20 years), [4] 91.754% 56 Fe, 2.119% 57 Fe and 0.286% 58 Fe. There are 28 known radioisotopes and 8 nuclear isomers, the most stable of which are 60 Fe (half-life 2.6 million years) and 55 Fe (half-life 2.7 years).
Caesium-135 is a mildly radioactive isotope of caesium with a half-life of 1.33 million years. It decays via emission of a low-energy beta particle into the stable isotope barium-135. Caesium-135 is one of the seven long-lived fission products and the only alkaline one.
(The more massive 209 Bi, long considered to be stable, actually has a half-life of 2.01×10 19 years.) 208 Pb is also a doubly magic isotope, as it has 82 protons and 126 neutrons. [6] It is the heaviest doubly magic nuclide known. A total of 43 lead isotopes are now known, including very unstable synthetic species.
Forty radioisotopes have been characterized, with the most stable, besides 176 Lu, being 174 Lu with a half-life of 3.31 years, and 173 Lu with a half-life of 1.37 years. All of the remaining radioactive isotopes have half-lives that are less than 9 days, and the majority of these have half-lives that are less than half an hour.
All three isotopes are radioactive (i.e., they are radioisotopes), and the most abundant and stable is uranium-238, with a half-life of 4.4683 × 10 9 years (about the age of the Earth). Uranium-238 is an alpha emitter, decaying through the 18-member uranium series into lead-206.