Radioactivity, discovered more than 100 years ago and studied by physicists ever since, would seem to be a relatively closed subject in science. However, since the 1960s, the pursuit of at least one ...

The element radium can be found in extremely tiny amounts in the Earth’s crust and oceans, and in its pure form it is a soft silvery metal. To an untrained eye, a small piece of radium may look like a ...

Alpha decay represents a fundamental mode of radioactive disintegration wherein an unstable nucleus emits an alpha particle—a tightly bound cluster of two protons and two neutrons. This process not ...

In a random moment, all energy is lost. The unstable subject cannot help but decay, slowly but surely, letting go of particles to become stable. It loses itself to become balanced again. This is a ...

One of the first things that Physics students learn when they study radioactivity is the idea of the half-life. A half-life is the period of time in which it takes one-half of a given amount of a ...

A new map offers a new perspective on the city, revealing the steady, ever-present natural radiation emerging from the ground ...

Nuclear physics is a forbidding subject, even to trained physicists. To understand current news and discussions about nuclear science and technology, some background knowledge is required, and the ...

The nuclei of certain atoms are stable and under ordinary circumstances, stable nuclei do not undergo change. The nuclei of other atoms are unstable. These nuclei undergo change spontaneously, that is ...