Talk:Stable nuclide

message: page move was carried outRadiogenic (talk) 02:25, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

message: How many stable isotopes are there? what percentage of all mass do they take up in:
*earth
*the sun
*the universe? 
cheers, mastodon 23:45, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abundance 

message: *Support; the reader would benefit if the content were merged. The resulting article would still be fairly short. Walter Siegmund (talk) 18:50, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge discussion 

message: It seems that the stable isotopes of C,H,O,N, and maybe a few others (S?) have so many useful applications, from determining the source of the carbon in the testosterone in Floyd Landis's bloodstream, to the water use efficiency of plants... that there is  room for content on these subjects separate from the list of all known stable isotopes.
Anyone up to the challenge of writing about it all?
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.124.76.137 (talk • contribs) 01:15, 3 August 2006.
Topic merged.
203.89.172.185 22:45, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Applications

message: Removed pointless table. The formatting was off - Be, F, ... appeared under the zero heading (or halfway between it and one). Is this just a bit of counting WP:OR? It will need some justification (double meaning there) if it is to be included. Vsmith 15:09, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Group of Stable Isotopes 

message: Xenon has only 7 stable isotopes. 
Xenon-136 is unstable.
please fix the list it !  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.59.106.58 (talk) 08:32, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Xenon 

message: I have compared the current article list  to the current content of the article reference .
I am just reporting the differences here without evaluating them, which I haven't done any research for. The article has nine entries not in the reference:
:Chromium-50, Zinc-70, Tellurium-123, Xenon-124, Xenon-136, Cerium-142, Tantalum-180m, Tungsten-183, and Tungsten-184.
The reference has eight stable entries not in the article:
:76Ge, 116Cd, 120Te, 125Te, 130Ba, 151Eu, 180W, 209Bi.
PrimeHunter (talk) 00:17, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Try to search in this mode: . You can see that there are stable isotopes as well as isotopes with half-life shown like greater than 1.8E+17 y etc. It means that the radioactivity for given nuclide was not found and it should be considered as stable. Take into account that this database is somewhat old (February 1999) and studies in the last decade are not reflected. --V1adis1av (talk) 17:48, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Differences from reference 

message: Wouldn't most physicist say that if there's lower energy (double electron capture, double beta) then it's very likely it's not stable it's merely very long half life  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.170.59.139 (talk) 21:08, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, but predicting it is one thing, seeing it is another. Hydrogen, and indeed all elements, are predicted to be unstable by proton decay, which is actually allowed (though rare) in standard theory. It hasn't yet been seen. If we put in all the things that could happen in theory, there would be no stable isotopes AT ALL. SBHarris 23:46, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's remember also that there have been theories which have been accepted as standard by "most physicists" but later turned out to be wrong. A responsible encyclopedia must distinguish between observed facts and unproved theories, even if they are consensus theories. Dirac66 (talk) 00:19, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: What you say above, Dirac 66, is a very rare event! For common people like you and me, THEY ARE NOT EVEN WORTH BEING CONCERNED ABOUT. Why do you worry about something that happens in one case out of a million? I suggest that you pay attention to the 999,999 and that would do you a lot more good.98.67.96.19 (talk) 17:17, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Policy 

message: To Sbharris: I am trying to understand the meaning of an already confusing sentence to which you added the words "greater than" which confuse me even more. The sentence now reads
"The shortest half-lives of easily detectable primordially present radioisotopes are around 700 million years (e.g., 235U), with a lower present limit on detection of primordial isotopes of half live greater than 80 million years (e.g., 244Pu)."
Is the following suggested rewrite equivalent? "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 (greater than?) 80 million years (e.g., 244Pu)."
Also, the 244Pu article says (in the first sentence) that the half-life is 80 million years, so what does "greater than" mean here? Dirac66 (talk) 14:05, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I should re-write this so it's impossible to misunderstand. We can detect the primordial presense of isotopes that have half lives greater than 80 million years. For those that half half lives shorter than that, there's too little around to see with present methods. This could change. For the cutoff between Pu-244 and the nuclide with the next-shorter half-life, see list of nuclides. Meanwhile, I'll try to clarify this. SBHarris 18:52, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing sentence in Definition of stability ... 

message: I think we should take a tellurium-128 in "stable" isotopes category because with the half life 2.2x10^24 years so that mean only one decay in about 1925 days if we have a mole of this isotopeCristiano Toàn (talk) 10:12, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Our policy has been to declare any isotope that has a measured halflife (by any means) to be fair game for being a radioisotope (otherwise you get into all the problems mentioned in this article and wind up with only 90 stable isotopes left, all in the first 40 elements).  Te-128 has the longest half life known, but not from direct measurement but geochronology. I believe from measurement by mass spectrometry of excess (stable) Xe-128 (to which Te-128 it has decayed by double beta decay) in rocks containing Te-128. It's a sort of Te/Xe dating, but using the date of the rock found by other means to inversely measure the half life of the Te-128 in it. 2e24 years is what came out. Think of a mole sitting in a rock for a billion years-- If you get one decay every 5.3 years then you end up with 200 million atoms of extra Xe-128. Perhaps enough to count a few. SBHarris 03:39, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tellurium-128 

message: Also note that if the list is ordered by atomic number, we have OE81Tl205 in 4th place behind EE82Pb206, EE82Pb207, and EE82Pb208. And we used to have OE83Bi209 as first, until it was reported that a few of them would occasionally emit an alpha (2He4) particle and drop back into the OE81Tl205 category. And it is the theory that all Bi209 isotopes are identical that causes this event to make us believe that there are no stable 83Bi209 atoms.WFPM (talk) 23:31, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Maximum stability atomic number fallback rationale

message: H-1, H-2 He-3, He-4 Li-6, Li-7 Be-9 B-10, B-11 C-12, C-13 N-14, N-15 O-16, O-17, O-18 F-19 Ne-20, Ne-21, Ne-22 Na-23 Mg-24, Mg-25, Mg-26 Al-27 Si-28, Si-29, Si-30 P-31 S-32, S-33, S-34, S-36 Cl-35, Cl-37 (Ar-36), Ar-38, Ar-40 K-39, K-41 (Ca-40), Ca-42, Ca-43, Ca-44, (Ca-46) Sc-45 Ti-46, Ti-47, Ti-48, Ti-49, Ti-50 V-51 (Cr-50), Cr-52, Cr-53, Cr-54 Mn-55 (Fe-54), Fe-56, Fe-57, Fe-58 Co-59 (Ni-58), Ni-60, Ni-61, Ni-62, Ni-64 Cu-63, Cu-65 (Zn-64), Zn-66, Zn-67, Zn-68, (Zn-70) Ga-69, Ga-71 Ge-70, Ge-72, Ge-73, Ge-74 As-75 (Se-74), Se-76, Se-77, Se-78, (Se-80) Br-79, Br-81 (Kr-78), Kr-80, Kr-82, Kr-83, Kr-84, (Kr-86) Rb-85 (Sr-84), Sr-86, Sr-87, Sr-88 Y-89 Zr-90, Zr-91, Zr-92, (Zr-94) Nb-93 (Mo-92), Mo-94, Mo-95, Mo-96, Mo-97, (Mo-98) Tc-->No stable isotopes! (Ru-96), Ru-98, Ru-99, Ru-100, Ru-101, Ru-102, (Ru-104) Rh-103 (Pd-102), Pd-104, Pd-105, Pd-106, Pd-108, (Pd-110) Ag-107, Ag-109 (Cd-106), (Cd-108), Cd-110, Cd-111, Cd-112, (Cd-114) In-113 (Sn-112), Sn-114, Sn-115, Sn-116, Sn-117, Sn-118, Sn-119, Sn-120, (Sn-122), (Sn-124) Sb-121, Sb-123 (Te-120), Te-122, Te-124, Te-125, Te-126 I-127 (Xe-124), (Xe-126), Xe-128, Xe-129, Xe-130, Xe-131, Xe-132, (Xe-134) Cs-133 (Ba-132), Ba-134, Ba-135, Ba-136, Ba-137, Ba-138 La-139 (Ce-136), (Ce-138), Ce-140, (Ce-142) Pr-141 Nd-142, (Nd-143), (Nd-145), (Nd-146), (Nd-148) Pm-->No stable isotopes! (Sm-144), (Sm-149), (Sm-150), (Sm-152), (Sm-154) (Eu-153) (Gd-154), (Gd-155), Gd-156, Gd-157, Gd-158, (Gd-160) Tb-159 (Dy-156), (Dy-158), Dy-160, (Dy-161), (Dy-162), (Dy-163), Dy-164 (Ho-165) (Er-162), (Er-164), (Er-166), (Er-167), (Er-168), (Er-170) (Tm-169) (Yb-168), (Yb-170), (Yb-171), (Yb-172), (Yb-173), (Yb-174), (Yb-176) (Lu-175) (Hf-176), (Hf-177), (Hf-178), (Hf-179), (Hf-180) (Ta-180m), (Ta-181) (W-182), (W-183), (W-184), (W-186) (Re-185) (Os-184), (Os-187), (Os-188), (Os-189), (Os-190), (Os-192) (Ir-191), (Ir-193) (Pt-192), (Pt-194), (Pt-195), (Pt-196), (Pt-198) (Au-197) (Hg-196), (Hg-198), (Hg-199), (Hg-200), (Hg-201), (Hg-202), (Hg-204) (Tl-203), (Tl-205) (Pb-204), (Pb-206), (Pb-207), (Pb-208) Bi or heavier-->No more stable isotopes!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.126.202.81 (talk) 15:50, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: There is also a list in this article. Did you take time to read it? Do you disagree with it? SBHarris 22:50, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: He or she appears to disagree with the inclusion in Te-123 in the list in the article. Double sharp (talk) 11:14, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, they are out of date (see below). Te-123 has a half life at least 5x10^19 years and probably much longer. It is presently observationally stable. SBHarris 02:55, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I know, and was just clarifying the situation! :-) Double sharp (talk) 10:56, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stable isotopes 

message: Why Te-123 is stable? It's half-life is 5.99E14 year right?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.126.202.81 (talk) 15:20, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: No. See isotopes of tellurium. Decay of Te-123 by EC was claimed to have been observed, but more recent observations have not found it, and the report was apparently in error. New limits on naturally occurring electron capture of 123Te full paper on arXive URL: 
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.67.014323. Te-123 is still observationally stable. In theory it has a half life that has been calculated (as do many other "stable" nuclides"), but (see list of nuclides) our policy here has been to include only nuclides that have more direct evidence of decay, in terms of observation, or historical measurment of decay products in old rocks. SBHarris 02:54, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm quite curious why 123Te is so stable. It must decay, as its electron capture to 123Sb releases energy. What I'm wondering is what inhibits it from this decay (and why the energy released is so small). Double sharp (talk) 15:15, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Apparently one needs to be a nuclear physicist to understand it. . An even-proton odd-neutron nuclide is capturing an electron to be an odd-proton even-neutron nuclide, and isn't happy about it or that eager to do it. The various influences lined up on both sides of this are apparently nearly balanced. There are a lot of things in nature that are energetically favorable that just don't happen. Decay of all the "stable" nuclides heavier than Z=40, for example. Perhaps we just live on the wrong time scale, is all. SBHarris 05:09, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Part of it must be that 123Sb has spin 7/2+ and 123Te 1/2+, so the beta decay would be second-forbidden. The mass difference is also really tiny (123Sb: 122.9042140; 123Te: 122.9042700), so it is no wonder that 123Te is grumpy about having to decay theoretically. Double sharp (talk) 12:28, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Te-123 

message: The information on how many elements have how many stable isotopes ought to be TABULATED rather than listed in a very long sentence in the text. The tabulated information would be much faster to read and to grasp.
I tried to tabulate thie information this morning, but then someone who must believe that he OWNS this article reverted my changes. I do not appreciate it. If you did not like my tabulated information, you should have worked on making a better table rather than greedily reverting the work that I had done.
You might not believe it, but tabulated information is often a much better way to present it for ease of comprehension. Otherwise, why would bother making and using tables?98.67.96.19 (talk) 17:03, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps our web-reader programs differ? I see no sentence. I see a carriage-return delimited WP:LIST. This works fine for the purpose, but I have no objection to a table. I fail to find the edit where somebody reverted your conversion of a delimited LIST to a table. Could you point it out? SBHarris 18:31, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tabulate the Information  

message: I've been thinking of creating an article on Valley of nuclear stability, but ran across this article.  There seems to be a general confusion of articles on this subject.  Nuclear valley (which is vague) redirects here, whereas Valley of stability redirects to Island of stability (which is wrong!).  I am not so sure that "stable nuclide" is quite the place for a redirect from "valley of stability".  I propose a new article on Valley of nuclear stability - such an article would provide an umbrella discussion of stable/unstable nuclei.   At the very least, the term "Valley of nuclear stability" or "Valley of stability" is a basic concept in nuclear physics that needs a better description/discussion; there are ample available citations for this term ("Vally of stability" alone is a term that seems overly generic, if one is not aware of its nuclear context).  Incidentally, this article has as its first figure a "Graph of nuclides..."...  I've just learned this is called a "Segre' chart", a term this article should define.  I got here by working on beta decay and neutron.  I had started a "sandbox" version of the proposed article at User:Bdushaw/Valley of nuclear stability; still in chicken-scratch phase.  The reference
"Nucleus: A trip into the heart of matter". By R. Mackintosh, J. Ai-Khalili, B. Jonson, and T. Pena, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 2001 ISBN: 0-801 8-6860-2 url: http://www.nupecc.org/pans/Data/CHAPT_6.PDF  seemed illuminating.  What do people think?  Bdushaw (talk) 22:23, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Meanwhile there is also Table of nuclides - this article, and others, have considerable redundancy with this one.  Bdushaw (talk) 22:34, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Valley of nuclear stability - general problems 

message: What an awful article. I strongly disagree with the first sentence of the lead:"Stable nuclides are nuclides that are not radioactive and so (unlike radionuclides) do not spontaneously undergo radioactive decay." Although I understand that the lead should be simple, this sentence is simply wrong without the additional qualification that they are isotopes which have no MEASURABLE radioactivity (or "observable", if you want). I forget who it was who said we should make our statements as simple as possible, but no simpler, and I argue that hiding the SCIENCE (observational aspects) of the definition is misleading. There are a variety of other problems with the article, most of them fairly minor. Primordial is used before it is explained and should not imho ever be used to mean of an age of ~~4.5 billion years when the article also discussed the Big Bang (13.8 billon years ago). And speaking of the big bang, this article implies that many of the stable isotopes were created during primordial nucleosynthesis (see what I mean about the word 'primordial'?), and they were (generally) NOT. I see no reason that the sentence "Many naturally occurring radioisotopes (another 51 or so, for a total of about 339) exhibit still shorter half-lives than 68 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, 14C made from nitrogen)." is such a run on and so long. Add to that the fact that by "bombardment of Earth" what is really meant is collision of cosmic rays (link) with atoms in the Earth's atmosphere. (which is mostly what happens.) The article has obviously been added to by more recent contributors who for some reason did not remover earlier and conflicting verbiage. It needs a entire make-over by someone more articulate than I am ("present bombardment" ?!?!?). It should NOT, imho, take a close reading of the entire article to find out that 1. We don't know which, IF ANY, of the elements are infinitely (indefinitely) stable, 2. Our definition of stability is constrained by the methods we use, and those methods are continuing to improve, and 3. For more or less historical reasons, we regard 80 elements as having stable isotopes. I strongly doubt the claim that the "island of stability" is theorized to contain STABLE isotopes - Citation needed. (and as far as THAT article, it's in worse shape than this one! Nuclear shell model? and I thought we were in the 21st Century! Explaining nuclear stability in terms of the shell model is an exercise in numerology, imho; too bad someone more knowledgeable in the science hasn't contributed.) Oh, and I wonder about what "do not spontaneously undergo radioactive decay" MEANS in a Universe filled with neutrinos - do we really know? Just showing my ignorance, probably, but still...the existence of particles which only rarely interact with normal matter in such high abundance (here I'm speaking of not only neutrinos but also dark matter particles) makes "spontaneous" a bit questionable to me. One last thought: It might be helpful for a short lucid explanation of the relationship and differences between the terms "nuclide", "isotope", and "stable element".173.184.23.223 (talk) 17:48, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Awful article 

message: I think the list of stable isotopes here might better be presented as a Segrè chart (and then it would make sense to also show the other primorial radioisotopes, though maybe not 244Pu and 146Sm which fall in a weird limbo where some must be around but experimentally finding them is seriously problematic). Double sharp (talk) 03:28, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Presentation 

message: I must object to the listing of elements prior in nuclear number to Bi that have various arguments for stability. The point is to, as the article says, summarize "stable nuclides."  The article confuses the issue because of the multiple addenda and footnotes on the list.  It's sufficient to note Tc as an exception and close the table after Pb.  It's reasonably known (but worth discussion in the main text) in informed circles that Pb is the last stable element, as opposed to Bi, but I wouldn't bicker over Pb vs Bi.  That the latter requires ages as to its half-life beyond the billions of years of our universe is of course why our forbears though it stable.  
But to predict via endless parentheticals and footnote indicators (asterisks, carets, daggers, etc) with which the list offered is burdened does not serve the Wiki population well. This should just recite the stable nuclides we know, with one style of asterisk for those that like Bi we know to be radioactive on a universe-exceeding timeline such as its at 10^19 years.  Predicting decay on the order of years that exceed Bi (already at an almost incomprehensible order of magnitude at 10^19) just confuses the issue and should be moved to another article, perhaps, "Theoretically Radioactive Nuclides."  This article should answer a reasonably educated layperson looking to the answer as to what are the stable (or, within the asterisk, observationally stable) nuclides.  My humble.  Citizen Sunshine (talk) 05:28, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Double sharp (talk) 13:48, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

text: Many thanks for taking my recommendation seriously; the revised table is much more legible and useful as an explanator of "stable nuclides." Citizen Sunshine (talk) 04:52, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Appeal for the People (or Myself) 

message: The theoretically stable nuclides are those with the lowest energies among the isobars A = 1 ~ 142 (5 and 8 excluded), 156 ~ 159, 163 ~ 164.
In terms of atomic numbers or neutron numbers, they are nuclides with Z ≤ 59 (N ≤ 82) that have the lowest energies among their isobars, and 142Nd, 156,157,158Gd, 159Tb, 163,164Dy. 129.104.241.162 (talk) 19:26, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Summary 

message: The nuclides with the same number of protans(Z)and neutrons(N) or the same mass number (A) which differ in energy states are called NUCLEAR ISOMERS.' 117.228.219.243 (talk) 07:53, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nuclear Isomers 

message: The chart titled "Binding energy per nucleon of common isotopes" [Binding energy curve - common isotopes.svg] has a series of points indicated by either diamonds (most of them) or squares (about 20), and for the diamonds, some appear to be not quite vertically oriented. But there is no discussion anywhere associated with this chart to explain what the distinction is which is indicated by these two markers. Does anyone have a clue what this is about? 2001:56A:F0E9:9B00:68D7:C67D:3EFE:A8D1 (talk) 22:00, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Binding Energy chart