A
"radioactive isotope" refers to an element's version that has unstable atoms. These unstable atoms emit energy in the form of radiation as they try to become stable. This radiation can be dangerous to living things, but it is also useful in various fields like medicine and energy production.
Full definition
This method relies on the uptake of a naturally occurring
radioactive isotope of carbon, carbon - 14 by all living things.
A main source of the 44 trillion watts of heat that flows from the interior of the Earth is the decay of
radioactive isotopes in the mantle and crust What is the «half - life» of a radioactive element?
He found that the material was laced
with radioactive isotopes of phosphorus, cobalt, zinc, silver and other elements, enough to provide raw material for a serious research programme.
«My findings indicate that a supernova shock wave is still the most - plausible origin story for explaining the short
lived radioactive isotopes in our Solar System,» Boss said.
As the world waits to hear whether
radioactive isotopes from the Fukushima reactor explosions have been released into the air, ecologists are becoming anxious about the environmental effects — and not just in Japan.
A good example is that many oil companies don't abandon wells drilled in the 50's 60's and 70's because they know some nasty stuff
including radioactive isotopes have been tossed into mud pits and sumps and that it will cost them a small fortune to clean up.
The fact that atoms could be trapped in a sealed cell also meant rare species of atoms, such
as radioactive isotopes, could be optically manipulated.
Uranium - 235 (U-235) is an isotope of uranium widely used for nuclear power generation and, like all
other radioactive isotopes used in medicine, it has been also employed for diagnosis and treatment of diseased organs and tumors.
These primordial meteorites contain compounds that can only have formed from the decay of
radioactive isotopes produced when a star explodes in a supernova.
In addition to uranium - 238 and radium - 226, the researchers report the samples contained elevated levels of the environmentally persistent
radioactive isotopes uranium - 234, thorium - 230, lead - 210 and polonium - 210.
Last year, these ideas were put to the test at ISOLDE, a facility for making
rare radioactive isotopes at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, to predict the outcome of fissioning mercury - 180.
Some models suggest the core of Ceres may be heated
by radioactive isotopes left over from the dwarf planet's formation.
The gamma rays would produce airborne
radioactive isotopes such as carbon - 14 and beryllium - 10, which would fall to the ground.
For a year, in addition to testing air samples
for radioactive isotopes, Bartke collected soil organisms, insects and other invertebrates, and a few snakes and lizards, making do with the little equipment and few supplies that he had.
But when Borg, working with colleagues in Denmark and Washington, D.C., finished
measuring radioactive isotopes in the rock, they pegged its age at 4.36 to 4.359 billion years.
If you undergo
radioactive isotope therapy or chemotherapy, however, you must stop breastfeeding until the radioactive elements or medications are completely gone from your body.
To protect infant health, the American Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend breastfeeding for women receiving certain drugs, including diagnostic or
therapeutic radioactive isotopes or exposure to radioactive materials, antimetabolites or chemotherapeutic agents, and current use of drugs of abuse (4).
Very recently a new technique called positron emission transverse tomography has been developed that makes it possible to detect from outside the skull the presence of deoxyglucose or other substances labeled with positron
emission radioactive isotopes.
Proving that the bacteria truly fixed the nitrogen used by the plant, required exposing plants to
radioactive isotopes at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
India's Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) says it took the drastic step because the university missed its August deadline for filing a fact - finding report on an incident that took place in April, when the Chemistry Department breached regulations by selling as scrap a gamma irradiator containing the
highly radioactive isotope cobalt - 60.
Uranium - 235 is the only fissile
radioactive isotope which is a primordial nuclide existing in the nature in its present form since before the creation of Earth.
According to the Marine Technology Society, brown seaweeds, such as kelp, contain fucoidan and algin, which have been shown to remove lead, mercury, cadmium, barium, tin and other heavy metals from tissues.20 Seaweeds also help
remove radioactive isotopes from the body.
Radiocarbon dating depended upon the discovery cosmic rays, which constantly bombard Earth and turn some carbon atoms in living tissue
into radioactive isotope carbon - 14.
However, exploding stars
make radioactive isotopes of aluminum that would decay into other elements too quickly to make a foil target out of them.
They studied boulders from the New Zealand site where the glacial wood had been found, measuring the concentrations in the rocks of
radioactive isotopes beryllium - 10 and chlorine - 36, which are produced by nuclear reactions between minerals and cosmic rays.
Researchers will also
track radioactive isotopes such as tritium, a form of hydrogen, to better understand the ocean's circulation systems and to learn how they might be shifting in response to climate change.
Despite the intrigue surrounding Litvinenko's death, the poison that killed him, a rare
radioactive isotope called polonium 210, is far more widespread than many of us realize: people worldwide smoke almost six trillion cigarettes a year, and each one delivers a small amount of polonium 210 to the lungs.
That's when U.S. scientists exploded the world's first atomic bomb and when the human -
induced radioactive isotope clock started ticking.
To keep searching, experiments must get bigger, while remaining extremely clean, free from any dust or contamination that could
harbor radioactive isotopes.
The initial nuclear accident from the Fukushima reactors released
several radioactive isotopes, such as iodine - 131, cesium - 134 and cesium - 137.
Each nuclear sample has a host of distinctive attributes, including the exact mix of impurities, the ratio of
different radioactive isotopes, even embedded carbon compounds that indicate the sample's age.
The flares may have seeded the early solar system with
fragile radioactive isotopes, providing a possible origin for puzzling trace elements in asteroids.
He anticipates broad applications, including stabilizing soil in flood zones,
isolating radioactive isotopes, and identifying early life in the fossil record by tracking changes in carbonate mineralization.
Not Ernö Rubik's latest toy, but the data from a four - year experiment to measure the half - life of the rare
radioactive isotope silicon - 32.