Science Memes

11161 readers

2845 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
Keep it rooted (on topic).
No spam.
Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

[email protected]

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

559

Radioactivity (mander.xyz)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

61 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If you only think about half live then yes it would be radioactive forever but in reality after a long time every atom would've decayed into non radioactive elements.

You can even calculate the expected time it would take for the random process of decay to terminate.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

"after a long time" - that is exactly my point. Where do you draw the line? It will never be non-radioactive, which the headline suggest would be the case in 1'500 years. As far as we know, everything might decay after some time. It will always have some Radon get trapped in it. Scatter some cosmic rays. Blablabla.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

By that logic, everything withing a few kilometers of the surface is radioactive, especially all life. That's not a useful definition of radioactive.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

Hence my post, the relevant metric is "how much", not "if".