How long does iron decay? Why is there only a half life and no full life ?

There are four stable isotopes of iron, fe-54, fe-56, fe-57, and fe-58, which can be considered half-life without taking into account proton decay.

Infinitely long; There are also two other radioisotopes.

Fe-55 and Fe-59 have half-lives of years and days, respectively.

Half-life

Radioelement.

Internally, due to quantum effects, there will be a random decay ** into other atoms), a large number of atoms come together to decay in accordance with the statistical law, we put radioactive matter.

The time it takes for half to decay is called half-life.

Half-life is a statistical concept, which only makes sense for a large number of radioactive atoms, but not for a single atom, and a single radioactive atom we can describe in terms of average lifetime, and the relationship between the two is:

Average life = half-life ln2 ;

For example, carbon-14 will spontaneously decay into nitrogen-14 with a half-life of 5730 years, that is, for 10 grams of carbon-14, after 5730, only 5 grams of carbon-14 remain, and after another 5730 years, there will be only grams of carbon-14 left.

Isotopes of iron

In nuclear physics, we know about nuclear fusion.

The end point of nuclear fission is also iron, the iron nucleus.

It is the most stable of all the elements, and has the lowest average nuclear mass, and in massive stars, the fusion of elements to iron means that the star is dead.

There are four stable isotopes of iron, which are fe-54, fe-56, fe-57, and fe-58, and the four isotopes are abundant in nature.

respectively1%, and, and two other radioisotopes, fe-55 and fe-59, have half-lives of years and days, respectively.

Among them, iron-59 is also often used as a tracer, allowing medical personnel to track the body's metabolism, which is of great significance for the tracking of certain diseases and drugs.

Proton decay

Without considering the decay of protons, we can consider the stable isotope half-life of iron to be infinitely long, but quantum mechanics.

According to the results of the nuclear decay experiment in Kamiokande, the half-life of protons is at least 10 35 years, far exceeding the age of our universe.

Proton decay is still a mystery in physics, and if protons do decay, according to heat death.

It is said that after a long, long time in the universe, all light elements will fuse into iron, and heavy elements will crack into iron, and then the protons in the iron atoms will decay again, and after decay, they will decompose into various leptons.

The universe will also enter the era of heat death.

The half-life of iron is years and days, respectively, and the half-life refers to the time it takes for radioactive material to decay by half, but the nature of decay is infinite, so there is no "full life".

The decay of iron is basically about half a year, and the main reason for only half-life is that iron is solid, so it is impossible to be corroded inside, so there is no full life.

The decay of iron takes one month, and the reason why there is no full life is because its structure is very stable.