Irradiated Dimes (2010)

Re:Irradiated Dimes (2010) by MaysonL on Monday October 23, 2017 @03:31PM (#15536235)

Reading this introduced me to the phenomenon of meta-stable nuclear isomers: states of atomic nuclei of an isotope which are more stable than the ground state of that isotope. (including the metastable isomer of 180m 73Ta, which is present in all tantalum samples at about 1 part in 8,300. Its half-life is at least 1015 years, markedly longer than the age of the universe.)

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Re:Irradiated Dimes (2010) by nielsbot on Monday October 23, 2017 @04:03PM (#15536489)

10^15?

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Re:Irradiated Dimes (2010) by klodolph on Monday October 23, 2017 @04:58PM (#15536877)

Yes, although Wikipedia says that the estimated lower bound is 45x10^15 years.

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Re:Irradiated Dimes (2010) by terminado on Monday October 23, 2017 @08:38PM (#15538237)

I was about to say, maybe it was supposed to be 1,015 of some other kind of unit of time.

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Re:Irradiated Dimes (2010) by badmin_ on Monday October 23, 2017 @06:59PM (#15537628)

You'd probably be interested in the metastable isotopes of hafnium, too. Most notably 178m2Hf.

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