The isotope's half-life is a whopping 1.4 million years, and breaks down into boron, allowing scientists to look much further back in time, over ten million years. As detailed in their paper ...

giving off radiation and changing into a different isotope. The rate at which nuclei decay is constant. Half-life describes the interval of time during which half of the original atoms decay.

The half-life of thorium-232 is about 14 billion years. Two other isotopes of thorium, which can be significant in the environment, are thorium-230 and thorium-228. Both decay by alpha emission, with ...

Misha lived her whole life in zoos, but this elephant’s teeth are now helping scientists reconstruct wildlife migrations. University of Utah geologists show how strontium isotopes found in teeth or ...

0.0625 of the original sample This could then be incorporated into other data. So, if the half-life is two days, four half-lives is 8 days. If a sample has a count rate of 3,200 Bq at the start ...

The generated isotopes are difficult to examine because of their short half-life. Thanks to the highly sensitive phase-imaging ion cyclotron resonance technique, masses for six lanthanum isotopes ...

This is done by choosing isotopes that: The half-life should be long enough to produce useful measurements but short enough for the radioactive sources to decay to safe levels soon after use.

Named "Zhulong" after a mythical creature symbolizing light in Chinese classic Shan Hai Jing, this nuclear battery uses energy from the decay of high-specific-activity C-14, a radioactive isotope with ...