In a paper to be published tomorrow in the journal Nature, researchers announce that they have observed the radioactive decay of xenon-124, which has a half-life of 1.8 X 1022 years.
The achievement is the first time scientists have measured the half-life of this xenon isotope based on a direct observation of its radioactive decay.
Not that I'm prepared to invest more time reading the actual research, but I have to wonder how much confidence they have in the half-life, when you can't collect statistics on the decay.... oddly, the second sentence implies that they are doing just that.
> In a paper to be published tomorrow in the journal Nature, researchers announce that they have observed the radioactive decay of xenon-124, which has a half-life of 1.8 X 10^22 years.
> The achievement is the first time scientists have measured the half-life of this xenon isotope based on a direct observation of its radioactive decay.
Not that I'm prepared to invest more time reading the actual research, but I have to wonder how much confidence they have in the half-life, when you can't collect statistics on the decay.... oddly, the second sentence implies that they are doing just that.
not a big fan of the title but damn