Physicists in France have measured the longest ever radioactive half-life - over twenty billion billion years - in a naturally occurring element that decays by emitting alpha-particles. Nőel Coron and ...

After emitting an alpha or beta particle, the nucleus will often still be ‘excited’ and will need to lose energy. It does this by emitting a high energy electromagnetic wave called a gamma ray. Gamma ...

Radioactive decay is a spontaneous and random process. A block of radioactive material will contain many trillions of nuclei and not all nuclei are likely to decay at the same time so it is impossible ...