- #1
SW VandeCarr
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Nuclear decay and the "age" of atoms.
All atomic nuclei heavier than hydrogen were created in stars and would therefore seem to have different ages relative to some specific spacetime reference. Nuclear decay wrt a single atom is taken to be a temporally random event, but is it plausible to consider that every atomic nucleus has its own clock and if we knew how old it was, we could predict when it would decay? Even if we did not know how to read such a clock, its existence would frame nuclear decay in deterministic terms rather than as fundamentally random events.
Is there anything known or allowed for in the current state of nuclear physics that might allow individual nuclei to be distinguished by their age? I understand that the current paradigm is that all isotopes of a given element are exactly alike wrt to their nuclear structure/dynamics.
All atomic nuclei heavier than hydrogen were created in stars and would therefore seem to have different ages relative to some specific spacetime reference. Nuclear decay wrt a single atom is taken to be a temporally random event, but is it plausible to consider that every atomic nucleus has its own clock and if we knew how old it was, we could predict when it would decay? Even if we did not know how to read such a clock, its existence would frame nuclear decay in deterministic terms rather than as fundamentally random events.
Is there anything known or allowed for in the current state of nuclear physics that might allow individual nuclei to be distinguished by their age? I understand that the current paradigm is that all isotopes of a given element are exactly alike wrt to their nuclear structure/dynamics.
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