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Also, only four naturally occurring, radioactive odd-odd nuclides have a half-life over a billion years: potassium-40, vanadium-50, lanthanum-138, and lutetium-176. Most odd-odd nuclei are highly unstable with respect to beta decay, because the decay products are even-even, and are therefore more strongly bound, due to nuclear pairing effects. [64]
For an example of this effect where the spin effect is subtracted, tantalum-180, the odd–odd low-spin (theoretical) decay product of primordial tantalum-180m, itself has a half life of only about eleven hours. [8] Many odd–odd radionuclides (like tantalum-180) with comparatively short half lives are known.
An atom consists of a small, heavy nucleus surrounded by a relatively large, light cloud of electrons. An atomic nucleus consists of 1 or more protons and 0 or more neutrons. Protons and neutrons are, in turn, made of quarks. Each type of atom corresponds to a specific chemical element. To date, 118 elements have been discovered or created.
For example, at over 1.9 × 10 19 years, over a billion times longer than the estimated age of the universe, bismuth-209 has the longest known alpha decay half-life of any isotope. [ 7 ] [ 8 ] The last 24 elements (those beyond plutonium, element 94) undergo radioactive decay with short half-lives and cannot be produced as daughters of longer ...
The atom is said to have undergone the process of ionization. If the electron absorbs a quantity of energy less than the binding energy, it will be transferred to an excited state. After a certain time, the electron in an excited state will "jump" (undergo a transition) to a lower state.
The atom helium-3 (3 He) consists of two protons, one neutron, and two electrons. The deuterium atom consists of one proton, one neutron, and one electron. The number of bosons within a composite particle made up of simple particles bound with a potential has no effect on whether it is a boson or a fermion.
Define the measure of a set to be its cardinality, that is, the number of elements in the set. Then, each of the singletons {i}, for i = 1, 2, ..., 9, 10 is an atom. Consider the Lebesgue measure on the real line. This measure has no atoms.
No odd-neutron-number isotope is the most naturally abundant isotope in its element, except for beryllium-9 (which is the only stable beryllium isotope), nitrogen-14, and platinum-195. No stable nuclides have a neutron number of 19, 21, 35, 39, 45, 61, 89, 115, 123, or ≥ 127.