Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to HALF LIVES

Parallel Half-Lives
ER — (archived)

Ra228 alpha-decays into the much more unstable Ra224 so the latter is probably responsible for some of the frenzied activity visiible on the phosphor. I believe they stopped making those clock dials in the 30s or 40s, so by now the scintillation due to radioactive excitation of the phosphor would be much reduced, perhaps no longer visible at all. The clock dials will still glow if exposed to light, but that fades after a few hous, and doesn't give the "quantized" appearance under magnification due to radioactivity. By now, most of the Ra228 will be used up, and the effect I described may be gone. The experiment I talked about above was conducted in the early 70s.

Too bad. Everyone interested in science should, at least once in his life,
directly experience with his own senses an effect occuring at the atomic, indeed, at the nuclear level. Staring at those millions of continuous little detonations in real time, and realizing that each one was the disintegration of one single nucleon, the human perception of one atomic event, moved me very deeply. In a way, I had "seen" an atom, if only it's moment of death.

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