Nuclear A,B&G radiation at absolute zero
Ed and Harriet Bakly
When all thermal energy is removed from a radioactive species is there
a decrease in radioactive output? Is there any research in this area?
Or is my question to dangerous to experiment on this species....Ed B
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HTML. Please don't post files of that sort here. - jb]
Gerald F. Thomas
"Ed and Harriet Bakly" <theb...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:aqchi8$99$1...@panther.uwo.ca...
So long as the species remains radioactive it will generate decay
heat.
--
Gerry T.
Uncle Al
Ed and Harriet Bakly wrote:
>
> When all thermal energy is removed from a radioactive species is there
> a decrease in radioactive output? Is there any research in this area?
> Or is my question to dangerous to experiment on this species....Ed B
Nuclear reactions are scaled around MeV, chemistry is scaled around
eV. Half-life does not care about low temps,
http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/Parity/expt.html
observation of decay at 3 millikelvin
I suppose you could look for very high order corrections because
thermal jitter will have a relativistic effect for the velocity
associated with oscillation (e.g., Mossbauer spectroscopy). The one
glaring exception might be electron capture decay. We know that
extreme oxidation states of the atom, by changing electron probability
density at the nucleus, can alter electron capture half-lives by a few
percent. Presumably lowering or raising the temperature could have a
similar leveraging effect, at least in kind if not magnitude. Ditto
strong electric or magnetic fields causing Stark or Zeemann splitting
of electron energy levels.
We might go further out on a thin limb and consider optical
hole-burning in electron states. If the captured electron is not
there, can it be captured? If an intermediate virtual state is turned
off or turned on, do capture kinetics change? It sounds like a lot of
optical bench fun fluffed out with all sorts of erudite statistical
waffling suitable for publishing.
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/eotvos.htm
(Do something naughty to physics)
J. J. Lodder
> When all thermal energy is removed from a radioactive species is there
> a decrease in radioactive output?
Well, there should be an -increase- actually,
since there is no time-dilatation by thermal motion anymore.
> Is there any research in this area?
The predicted effect is far too small te be observable.
And the independence of the radioactive rates from all external factors
(also pressure, phase transitions, chemical binding etc)
has of course been a subject of investigation from the very first.
Becquerel started it, right after discovering radioactivity.
> Or is my question to dangerous to experiment on this species....Ed B
Not at all, just not worthwhile,
Jan
BTW (there is a very small effect of chemical binding on electron
capture by nuclei, since that depends on the amplitude of the
wavefunctions at the nucleus.