Sentences with phrase «radioactive decays like»

Go for a morning jog over hilly terrain and the very landscape is likely to be the result of tectonic plate movements, powered deep under our feet in great part by radioactive decays like that of the humble americium writ large.

Not exact matches

The false vacuum was unstable, like a radioactive atom waiting to decay.

Krypton dating is much like the more - heralded carbon - 14 dating technique that measures the decay of a radioactive isotope — which has constant and well - known decay rates — and compares it to a stable isotope.

Like mainstream reactors, it is a «light water» design: The reactor is pressurized and filled with plain water that flows past the core, where the radioactive decay of uranium - 235 generates intense heat.

In addition, if the melted nuclear fuel proves bad enough — like Chernobyl's lethal mass of molten core known as the «elephant's foot» — it will have to be entombed for a number of years rather than removed, because of radiation risk from what is essentially a cooled shell of ceramic armor surrounding a highly radioactive core that remains hot and is still undergoing radioactive decay.

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.

Like 14C dating, thermoluminescence is related to radioactive decay..

Tangentially related to what James asked about geothermal power generation, you forgot to mention that radioactive decay is the source of most geothermal energy, something like 30 terawatts of flux these days according to my Google expertise.

There's weird crap happening far out in the solar system on Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft not being at the position and velocity where theory says they should be and radiothermal power supplies not decaying at rates predicted upon what are axiomatically constant radioactive decay rate of the isotopes like it isn't really a constant at all.

I had the impression that Mike was claiming that he couldn't get the Earth to cool to 3K and I was simply trying to point out that if you include radioactive decay, you wouldn't expect it to be 3K today in the absence of the Sun, and even if you ignore radioactive decay, it would still take longer than the age of the Universe for an Earth - like planet to cool to the temperature of the cosmic - background.

Place a moon - like solid object (no or infinitesimal amounts of liquids and gases) with a small internal radioactive - decay source of thermal energy in space isolated from all other matter.