The Many Lives Of Radioactive Nuclei

When you study radioactivity in high school or anything that relates to radioactive dating, you’re drilled in the fact that any and every radioactive (unstable) nuclei decay at a fixed mathematical rate called the half-life. Each ‘brand’ of nuclei has its own half-life that’s applicable or unique to those particular nuclei. What’s probably not drilled into you is that unstable nuclei decay for no reason at all and that tends to make a bit of a hash of the half-life relationship which in turn can’t be explained. Something is screwy somewhere.

Is there a relationship between causality and radioactive decay and the precise pattern to that decay? Why is this important or interesting? Because, at least in IMHO, there’s something screwy somewhere between the three that needs resolution. Radioactivity – exactly when something decays, in this case unstable (i.e. – radioactive) nuclei, is totally random. There is no rhyme or reason for the when. There is no cause according to quantum or particle physicists; therefore there should be no pattern according to me. If, contrary to scientific opinion, cause and effect operate at the quantum level (the micro realm where unstable nuclei go poof) then there are plausible mechanisms, again according to me*, that could account for a pattern – the half-life pattern – which is what we observe. So there’s a conflict here, or as I have stated, there’s something screwy somewhere. 

The central theme here is why do unstable nuclei decay according to a precise mathematical relationship termed the half-life? There are potentially dozens of other precise mathematical possibilities, and a near infinite ones if you abandon any mathematical symmetry altogether. Let’s explore a few of those.

For the sake of what follows, let’s assume a barrel full of 1000 marbles. Each marble represents one of the 1000 identical unstable radioactive nuclei ‘marbles’ or atomic ‘marbles’ that sooner or later will go poof and decay giving off, radioactivity – Alpha, Beta and/or Gamma Rays. The barrel is just to keep all of them in place – say like a 1000 atom lump of uranium. The decay or the poof will originate when someone removes a marble or the marble from the barrel.

Now how many ways can one remove marbles from the barrel – how many ways can unstable radioactive nuclei be made to decay.

For the standard half-life relationship to hold, you are restricted to pulling out half of the marbles that are in the barrel per fixed unit of time. You remove one half of the original lot of 1000 marbles per unit of time; then one half of the remaining 500 marbles per unit of time; then one half of the remaining 250 marbles per unit of time; then one half of the remaining 125 marbles, and so on and so forth – 62, 31, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1 and finally all 1000 marbles have been removed and there is no more instability left. All the 1000 radioactive atoms have now gone poof and decayed. You can plot that on a graph and get a nice pattern. That’s what’s in the textbooks.

Since the half-life works on an ever diminishing scale, one-half of the original, then one-half of what remains, then one-half of what remains after that, and so on, why that and why not other possible but similar relationships?

What about three-quarter lives? If you start with 1000 unstable marbles, after one unit of time you decay 750, leaving 250. Three-quarters of 250 is 188 that bite the dust after another identical interval of time leaving 62 to go. Three-quarters of 62 is 46 more who have decayed. That just leaves 16 radioactive marbles in the barrel. 12 of them go poof in the next time interval, leaving a bare quartet. One more time interval sees just one lone radioactive marble left, which of course will give up the ghost in the next (and final) time interval. 

Now what about two-third lives? If you start with 1000 unstable marbles, after one unit of time you decay 667, leaving 333. Two-thirds of 333 are 222 that bite the dust after another identical interval of time leaving 111 to go. Two-thirds of 111 are 74 more who have decayed. That just leaves 37 radioactive marbles in the barrel. 25 of those go poof in the next time interval, leaving a bare 12. One more time interval sees just four lone radioactive marbles left, three of which of course will give up the ghost in the next to last round, the lone and final survivor going down the gurgler in that next (and final) time interval. 

For another example, why a one-half life relationship in favour of an ongoing diminishing reciprocal to the above one-third relationship? Remove one-third of the 1000 marbles leaves 667. One-third now removed from those 667 leaves behind 445 ‘radioactive’ marbles. Remove one-third of those 445 marbles and you’re left with 297. One-third taken away from 297 leaves 198, then 132, then 88, then 59, then 39, then 26, then 17, then 11, then 7, then 5, then 3, then 2, then one is left which goes poof at that last pick of the draw; in that final unit of uniform time.

In a similar sort of exercise to a third-life, you can substitute the standard half-life for a quarter-life (1000, 750, 562, 421, 316, etc.) or a half-life for a fifth-life (1000, 800, 640, 512, 410, etc.).

Another variation on the theme might revolve around why does not Mother Nature decide, per fixed unit of time, on one-half of the original then one-third of the remaining then one-quarter of what remains after that, hence one-fifth, one-sixth, etc. In our 1000 marble in the barrel analogy, that’s one-half of the 1000 removed or 500 left, then one-third removed of the 500 or 333 remain, then one-quarter removed of the remaining 333 leaves 250 remaining, then one-fifth removal of the 250 leaves 200 remaining, then remove one-sixth of the 200 leaves 167, and so on down the diminishing line.

Or what about an inverse square relationship which is a common relationship in physics. So the diminishing relationship is one quarter, followed by one ninth of what remains, followed by one sixteenth of that, followed by one twenty-fifth, followed by one thirty-sixth, etc.  That is, start with 1000 marbles, then removing one quarter of those 1000 leaves 750, then removing one ninth of those 750 leaves 667, and removing one sixteenth of those 667 leaves 625, then removing one twenty-fifth of those 625 leaves 600, then removing one thirty-sixth of those 600 leaves 583, and so on. Why didn’t Mother Nature opt for that mathematical relationship for radioactive decay?

Now consider the near infinite number of alternatives or possibilities.

You could grab out all 1000 marbles in one fell swoop.

You could equally grab out 500, catch your breath, then grab out 500 more.

You could pull out 1 or 2 or 5 or 10, etc. marbles per unit of time. From say the initial 1000, pull out 25 each grab: 1000, 975, 950, 925, 900, 875, etc. Or, one could pull out any random number of marbles every 25 seconds.

You could pull out 1, then 2 then 3 then 4 then 5, etc. per unit of time. Starting with 1000, you’d have 1000, 999, 997, 994; 900; 985; 979; 972, etc. Or, pull out 1, then 2 then 4 then 8 then 16 then 32 then 64, etc. doubling each time. Or 1, then 4, then 9, then 16, then 25, then 36 more, then 47 more, then 64 more, then 81 more, then 100 more, etc., the squares of 1, 2, 3, etc. Or there’s the cubes of 1, 2 3, etc. – 1, 8, 27, 64, 125 and so on until all the marbles have been grabbed. Another relationship could be pulling out 1, then 2 more, then 3 more, then 5 more, then 8 more, then 13 more, then 21 more, then grab another 34, then another 55, etc. where what you grab out is the sum of the previous two grabs. Then there are the primes – grab 1, then 2 then 3 then 5 then 7 then 11 then 13 then 17, etc. There’s no end to the possible mathematically related sequences that have nothing to do with a half-life. 

If radioactive nuclei go poof for absolutely no reason at all – there’s no cause for the effect – as scientists claim**, then all radioactive nuclei decay should be absolutely random. It just so happens that mathematically the most probable way is a totally random way, a totally random selection of marbles from the barrel since there are way more ways of doing something (removing marbles from the barrel) randomly than doing something by the mathematical book – engineering some precise mathematical relationship that one can put down in equation form and graph as a symmetrical line or curve.

Take say two decks of cards, each numbered 1 to 52 and each shuffled well – then each shuffled again. A randomly chosen card from Deck A decides the number of marbles to be removed; a randomly chosen card from Deck B decides the time before you remove them. Picked cards are re-entered back into their respective decks and the decks shuffled again.

Now this is just a convenient-sized quasi-random number generator one can apply to our 1000 ‘radioactive’ marble sample. In reality, the first ‘deck of cards’ would have to represent every possible positive whole number, and the second time generator ‘deck of cards’ every possible increment of the smallest possible time unit – the Planck unit of time – in which anything meaningful can take place, like a nucleus decaying and going  poof.  Both random number generating ‘decks’ together then can deal with every radioactive nucleus that ever was and is in the entire cosmos.

Meantime, back to the 1000 marbles in the barrel and the two finite shuffled deck of cards from which numbers of marbles and time frames are picked randomly. I think you’d agree that if you followed the logic of picking and removing the number of marbles from the barrel based on a random shuffling of one deck of cards and doing so at time intervals based on the random shuffling of a second deck of cards, you are unlikely in the extreme to end up with the standard half-life relationship. Something is indeed screwy somewhere.

In conclusion, if you buy say a 24-can case of beer, there will come a point in time when half the contents (12 cans) have been consumed. But you couldn’t call that time interval the half-life of that case of beer since there is no reason to assume that the next six cans (half of the remaining 12 cans) will be consumed in the next identical time interval and the next three cans in an identical time interval following that. The same argument applies to radioactive (unstable) nuclei. The fact that the half-life relationship exists and has been verified in defiance of all that is logical given the lack of causality is suggestive evidence IMHO for the reality of, our reality being; the Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe scenario. It’s all just software programming done from a higher reality. 

* In the nanosecond that separates no decay from decay, something must of happened IMHO to trigger the decay event. I’ve gone on record elsewhere that a plausible mechanism might be neutrinos slam-banging into unstable nuclei, the impact being the tipping point that triggers the decay event.

**Scientists probably conclude that because nothing they do to radioactive nuclei, either chemically or physically makes any difference to the poof rate of that specific type of unstable nuclei. You can hammer them, boil them in oil, piss on them, feed them to bacteria, give them the evil eye, soak them in Holy Water, oxygenate then, play heavy metal music to them, shine a laser beam on them, freeze them, put them in a vacuum, and for all the good those things do, nothing changes. 

Further Reading:

Malley, Marjorie C.; Radioactivity: A History of A Mysterious Science; Oxford University Press, Oxford; 2011:



Radioactive Decay And Causality

We’re all frightened by radioactivity. We associate it with high level nuclear waste; atomic weapons and the mass destruction of nuclear war; Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Three Mile Island and Chernobyl; radioactive fallout that causes cancer and biological mutations. What I’m most frightened about radioactivity is that there is no rational scientific explanation for it! That’s probably because radioactivity resides within the realm of quantum physics, and there’s no rational scientific explanation for that either.

In high school science classes, we are told about a class of elements that have nuclei that are unstable; these are the radioactive elements and they emit radioactivity – Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation. This emission is their attempt to go from an unstable state to a less unstable state and eventually to a stable state. This progression happens at a fixed mathematical progression termed the element’s half-life. In class you get an awful lot of the what – what decays; what are the daughter products; what is the measured half-life; what is the significance, etc. But you don’t get very much, if any, explanations as to the how and the why of events. That’s probably because any attempt to actually explain and how and the why of radioactivity ends up as pure bovine fertilizer.

There are two main anomalies here. Firstly, why would two identical unstable particles in the exact same environment will decay or go poof at different times; secondly why any collection of identical unstable particles will decay or go poof while marching to the beat of a mathematical drum.

DESCRIPTION

Radioactive Decay: We all know about radioactivity (nuclear fission) and how some atomic nuclei are unstable and will at some point decay into more stable forms. So far; so good. The first issue is that nobody can predict when any particular unstable nuclei will go poof. There is no ultimate reason why one nucleus will go poof in five minutes and its next door neighbour won’t poof over the next five hundred years. There is no apparent causality involved. That alone is “Twilight Zone” stuff, but wait, there’s more. As we learn in high school, though the why is never explained, unstable (radioactive) nuclei decay or go poof in a fixed mathematical way, known by the phrase called the “half-life”.  An example would be if half of the unstable nuclei went poof in one year; one half of what remains unstable goes poof during the next year; one half of what is still unstable decays in the third year; one half of what remains after that goes poof in the fourth year, and so on down the line until all the unstable nuclei have gone poof. So if you start in the beginning with say sixteen million unstable nuclei, after one year there’s still eight million unstable nuclei; after two years there’s four million left to go; after three years two million still haven’t gone poof; after four years one million; one year later there’s still a half million left, and so on and so on.

On a human level, apart from the nasties given in the abstract, radioactivity provides an abundant energy supply without any greenhouse gas emissions as well as a ways and means of dating historical events. On a cosmic level, radioactive decay turns complex unstable parent nuclei into simpler stable daughter nuclei by emitting Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation, the former two being nothing more exotic than helium nuclei (the Alpha) and electrons (the Beta). Gamma radiation is best avoided since it is extremely high energy photons that can do your body a mischief.

STANDARD EXPLANATIONS

The standard quantum model attributes radioactivity or radioactive decay to a magical phenomenon called Quantum Tunnelling. Translated, radioactive decay happens for absolutely no reason whatsoever. There is no causality. There is no cause and effect. Things go poof – well, things just go poof.

To get your head around the concept of Quantum Tunnelling, imagine one hundred convicts milling around a prison courtyard with twenty foot walls and no external exits. Then, for no obvious reason, fifty of those convicts vanish from inside the courtyard just to reappear somewhere outside the courtyard, and hence quickly make themselves scarce. One second they are confined within the prison walls; one nanosecond later they are scattering in all directions heading for the hills. They have tunnelled their way past the prison courtyard wall without actually physically doing any tunnelling! The escaped convicts in this analogy are of course those bits and pieces confined (or imprisoned) in the quantum realm, the Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation part and parcel of radioactive decay. 

In the quantum realm, though the nuclei might be unstable, the bits and pieces are held in place by an energy barrier, the equivalent of the twenty foot prison courtyard wall. In the macro world, they don’t have enough energy to clear the barrier, just like a long fly ball that doesn’t have enough oomph to clear the outfield fence and become a homerun – it’s just a long out. But in the micro realm, for reasons nobody comprehends, the unstable and restless-to-escape bits of the unwieldy unstable nuclei can cheat and tunnel past the energy barrier even though they don’t have sufficient theoretical oomph to do so. Not only can they quantum tunnel through, when they do they so instantaneously. And there’s no rhyme or reason behind it. There’s no causality. One second they are inside the radioactive nucleus; the next nanosecond after they are free as a bird and outward bound.

Not that in and of itself is absurd, but absurdity is piled upon absurdity when you consider that the ‘convicts’ don’t escape not only for no reason, but they do so in a precise military precision or mathematical sort of way. So our one hundred convicts become fifty in one hour; then twenty-five of those remaining ‘tunnel’ to freedom in the next hour; thirteen of those twenty-five vanish through the wall in the third hour; six of the remaining twelve head for the hills during the fourth hourly interval; three more go walkabout in the fifth hour; two more vanish in the sixth hour; and the last one standing makes an unexplainable vanishing act in the seventh hour, leaving the prison courtyard in a pristine and very stable state indeed without an inmate in sight. 

How can you have both a total lack of causality AND maintain such military or mathematical (half-life) precision? It’s pure bovine fertilizer.  

PROBABILITY vs. CAUSALITY

The standard model suggests that radioactive decay happens for no apparent reason at all since Quantum Tunnelling happens for no apparent reason at all. It’s all pure probability, even if it dances to a precise military/mathematical tune. The idea that Quantum Tunnelling is just pure probability yet results in a really neat graph when plotted goes rather against the grain of common sense.

Dealing with radioactive decay, well we (the observers) say the odds (probability) that an unstable atomic nucleus will go poof in say one hour (just a measure of time which is a human concept) is 50/50. Actually, it’s 100% certainty if you replace “one hour” with the phrase “sooner or later”. There is no actual probability involved. Now let’s go up one level. Each kind of unstable atomic nuclei, be it uranium (U-235 or U-238), plutonium (Pu), Technetium (Tc), Radon (Rn), Radium (Ra) and all those normally non-radioactive elements that have unstable isotopes, like radioactive carbon (C-14), and many others too numerous to mention, has its own unique half-life. That in itself tells you that causality must be operating. All differing nuclei are only different because they have different numbers of protons and neutrons that comprise them. Yet each, say U-235 nuclei, has the exact same number of protons and neutrons. That’s what makes U-235, U-235. That’s causality, not probability. And U-235 has a specific and unique half-life. That’s causality, not probability. The fact that differing configurations of protons and neutrons result in differing half-lives, and any one unique configuration results in one unique half-life, tells you that things are not random. Causality is operating; certainty follows. I have no idea what is the causality behind Quantum Tunnelling, only that I’m certain there is one.

DISCUSSION

Now IMHO that radioactive half-life decay progression makes absolutely no sense. If nuclei go poof for no reason at all, all those that go poof should do so in a totally random fashion – no fixed pattern. Since there is a fixed pattern that suggests to me that the unstable nuclei have to ‘know’ about this half-life obligation they are required to follow. They are self-aware enough to know when it is their turn to suicide (decay) in order to keep up appearances; maintain the quantum social order, and keep the half-life relationship valid.   

Regarding Quantum Tunnelling, well firstly this violates Einstein’s cosmic speed limit – the velocity light travels in a vacuum. That’s because any gap instantaneously crossed by a particle undergoing Quantum Tunnelling – well, instantaneously means infinity and infinite velocity is greater than the speed of light.

Even scientist and science writer Marcus Chown described quantum tunnelling as “The apparently miraculous ability of microscopic particles to escape from their prisons”. When a scientist starts invoking miracles, you know something is weird!

Presumably if it wasn’t for that energy barrier holding together the bits and pieces of nuclei, stable or unstable, everything within would escape all at once and the micro world would go to hell in a hand-basket, just like if there were no prison walls all the convicts would flee in the immediate here and now. But if that energy barrier (or prison wall) could be breached (via Quantum Tunnelling) the question arises, if the ‘convicts’, macro or micro, can dematerialise and rematerialise elsewhere instantaneously, why don’t they all escape at the same time?

And I fail to see how invoking the wave property nature of elementary particles helps any since that would apply equally to stable and unstable (radioactive) nuclei. The wavelength would be larger than the nucleus, or in our analogy, the convict would be so spread out such that they would be larger than their prison courtyard. Everything, all the bits and pieces in each and every nuclei, should break out and break apart and escape immediately.  

When it comes to radioactivity, apparently nothing chemical or physical can be done that will alter the nature of that radioactivity. Something that’s unstable, radioactive, will decay when it damn well feels like it. You can boil it in oil, sledgehammer it, soak it in acid, swear at it, even invoke the name of Jesus and it won’t alter anything. That in itself is more than just a little bit anomalous – not the Jesus bit but the fact that nothing you can do to an unstable nucleus in any chemical or physical shape manner or form will cause it to decay before it feels like it. 

SUMMARY

Enigma number one is why two identical non-living things in an absolutely identical environment should individually act as something possessing free will, which is acting with seemingly minds of their own. That’s just plain bizarre. If they don’t have self-awareness, and it’s absurd to suggest that subatomic nuclei have consciousness, then the alternative is that things happen for absolutely no reason at all. That’s also just plain bizarre. Further heading into “The Twilight Zone”, well the mathematical half-life behind the concept of the decay of unstable radioactive nuclei is just not the sort of natural behaviour that you’d expect. All unstable nuclei of the same type and in the same environment should all go poof at nearly, if not exactly, at the same moment. They don’t. That too is an enigma, IMHO.