Sentences with phrase «radioactive decay inside»

Not exact matches

The researchers gauged the age of the rocks by looking at the amount of radioactive potassium inside that had decayed into stable argon.

If the original asteroids were bigger than about 20 kilometers across — and there's no reason to think they weren't — decaying radioactive elements inside them would have made the rock hotter than that.

These measurements may also shed light on the proportion of radioactive elements like uranium and thorium inside the Moon, since their decay produces heat and should increase the amount of heat radiated by the Moon, says Paul Spudis of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, US, who is developing radar instruments to fly on LRO and Chandrayaan - 1.

Since energy is constantly being added from the decay of the radioactive elements in the planet's core, the temperature inside a perfect reflector would rise until the reflector melted.