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Radioactivity (mander.xyz)

submitted 4 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] Eheran@lemmy.world 100 points 4 months ago

It will be radioactive forever. The question is where you put the threshold, which is fairly arbitrary.

[-] toast@retrolemmy.com 45 points 4 months ago

Eh, it could be non-radioactive next week. That's not very likely, but it could be

[-] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 30 points 4 months ago

eh, i could randomly teleport to the moon suddently, but things like theese are unlikely enough to be in effect completely and utterly impossible.

[-] xenoclast@lemmy.world 17 points 4 months ago

!remindme 10^10^10 universe lifetimes

[-] EddoWagt@feddit.nl 7 points 4 months ago

I could also phase through a wall by sheer coincidence of all my molecules missing the molecules of the wall, but yeah, not going to happen unfortunately

[-] thesporkeffect@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago

It would imply a significant energy release within a short time in order to become non-radioactive right?

[-] weker01@feddit.de 25 points 4 months ago

If you only think about half live then yes it would be radioactive forever but in reality after a long time every atom would've decayed into non radioactive elements.

You can even calculate the expected time it would take for the random process of decay to terminate.

[-] Eheran@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

"after a long time" - that is exactly my point. Where do you draw the line? It will never be non-radioactive, which the headline suggest would be the case in 1'500 years. As far as we know, everything might decay after some time. It will always have some Radon get trapped in it. Scatter some cosmic rays. Blablabla.