Definition of Stability, and Natural Isotopic Presence
Most naturally occurring nuclides are stable (about 254; see list at the end of this article); and about 34 more (total of 288) are known radioactives with sufficiently long half-lives (also known) to occur "primordially." If the half-life of a nuclide is comparable to, or greater than, the Earth's age (4.5 billion years), a significant amount will have survived since the formation of the Solar System, and then is said to be primordial. It will then contribute in that way to the natural isotopic composition of a chemical element. Primordially present radioisotopes are easily detected with half-lives as short as 700 million years (e.g., 235U), although some primordial isotopes have been detected with half-lives as short as 80 million years (e.g., 244Pu). However, this is the present limit of detection, as the nuclide with the next-shortest half-life (niobium-92 with half-life 34.7 million years) has not yet been detected in nature.
Many naturally-occurring radioisotopes (another 51 or so, for a total of about 339) exhibit still shorter half-lives than 80 million years, but they are made freshly, as daughter products of decay processes of primordial nuclides (for example, radium from uranium) or from ongoing energetic reactions, such as cosmogenic nuclides produced by present bombardment of Earth by cosmic rays (for example, carbon-14 made from nitrogen).
Many isotopes that are classed as stable (i.e. no radioactivity has been observed for them) are predicted to have extremely long half-lives (sometimes as high as 1018 years or more). If the predicted half-life falls into an experimentally accessible range, such isotopes have a chance to move from the list of stable nuclides to the radioactive category, once their activity is observed. Good examples are bismuth-209 and tungsten-180 which were formerly classed as stable, but have been recently (2003) found to be alpha-active. However, such nuclides do not change their status as primordial when they are found to be radioactive.
Most stable isotopes in the earth are believed to have been formed in processes of nucleosynthesis, either in the 'Big Bang', or in generations of stars that preceded the formation of the solar system. However, some stable isotopes also show abundance variations in the earth as a result of decay from long-lived radioactive nuclides. These decay-products are termed radiogenic isotopes, in order to distinguish them from the much larger group of 'non-radiogenic' isotopes.
Read more about this topic: Stable Isotope
Famous quotes containing the words definition of, definition, natural and/or presence:
“Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.”
—Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923)
“Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“Surely knowledge of the natural world, knowledge of the human condition, knowledge of the nature and dynamics of society, knowledge of the past so that one may use it in experiencing the present and aspiring to the future—all of these, it would seem reasonable to suppose, are essential to an educated man. To these must be added another—knowledge of the products of our artistic heritage that mark the history of our esthetic wonder and delight.”
—Jerome S. Bruner (20th century)
“What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)