Talk:List of nuclides

Table formatting

Welcome.

I like to see any helpful comment, especially about the table grammar. I used raw HTML for the layout of the table. Better to convert it to Wiki-table notation? If yes, which kind? Of cource I present only some typical parts not the whole list at the beginning of this page-birth. :) Regards Achim1999 (talk) 16:52, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Is colored emphases okay, to distinguish theoretical values from measured values? Also the meta stable isomeres are indicated by a red m . Achim1999 (talk) 17:42, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Wow! I have a good idea. :) A two-column table with two tables inside: the first only contains fixed numbers , the second the data and make the second one sortable! Achim1999 (talk) 11:39, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Sadly, {{val|MANTISSA,e=EXPONENT}}-templates seems not to be sortable in wikitables. :-( And I still don't know how to remove the spacing between the two wikitables inside a table. I want to know a good trick how to center these nuclide-symbols between their upper mass number and the lower element-symbol. (Make two columns and insert an invisible character of width 0 to be centered?)

{{help me}}technically regarding wikitables (user css necessary?) - I already asked at three different places in WP - and new problems turn up if I try to circumvent the previous. Achim1999 (talk) 16:04, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Do you have a question?--Cubs197 (talk) 23:04, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes. To be exactly, three. These I wrote in the above paragraph started from "Sadly ..." {{helpme}}

• ) Are {{val|MANTISSA,e=EXPONENT}}-templates be sortable in wikitables?

If yes, how?

SOLVED *) How to remove the spacing between the two wikitables inside a table? SOLVED

• ) How to center these nuclide-symbols between their upper mass number and the lower element-symbol?

For reference of the wikitables actually in use see the page "Table of nuclides (sorted by half-life)". Regards, Achim1999 (talk) 09:46, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Have you taken a look at Help:Table#Sorting, Help:Sorting, or Wikipedia:Manual of Style (chemistry)? The Help:Table should show you how to format the sorting in the table, not sure if it is possible with the templates involved. I would also recommend checking in at Talk:Table of nuclides. If you are still stuck I would recommend leaving a notice at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements or Wikipedia:Help Desk. -Optigan13 (talk) 00:16, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I have got a positive feedback by User:Headbomb to use {{hs}} to add hiden sortable sorting-key to ANY item to make the item sortable generally.

I have at least 5 times read the Help:Table page and also read Help:Sorting and played around an hour in a sandbox to only solve my second question unsuccessfully -- am not a beginner crying for help! :) The first seems to be a Javascript-sorting problem, the other two problems are wikitable problems. Rather pointless to look at talks on pages intended for subject-discussion (of cource you may be lucky by chance there). I get really sad by only been pushed around on WP concerning this technical questions. And I wonder why you deleted my {{helpme}} when you only suggest other places to ask. :-/ Regards, Achim1999 (talk) 09:32, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to Achim1999 (talk) who just solved my 2nd problem. By carefully studying again Help:table I noticed the style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto" parameter for wikitable. After some experiments I knew that this indeed controls the spacing of the table as a whole. The 1st and the 3rd controls vertical spacing, and the 2nd and 4th controls horicontal spacing. Setting the 2nd to 0em there where no space following the table, and the 4th arguemnt gives the space before the table (the indent). Regards, Achim1999 (talk) 11:29, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

My new created {{Sd1|NUMBER|SYMBOL}}-template should principlely solve my 3rd problem. But it did not work currently when called inside a wikitable. Any ideas? Regards, Achim1999 (talk) 18:24, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

It's displaying strangely because your template uses a table - tables don't work well when you put them in other tables. I'm having a hard time figuring out why you're using a table in that template, though - why not just ^NumberSymbol? Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 02:15, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for making some thoughts about my problem. :) The later is, what currently is used. But I want to have it centered about the location between "Number" and "Symbol". This idea how, I got aware of the example in Help:Table how to center decimal numbers about their decimal point. And if you check you will recognize that this template {{Sd1|NUMBER|SYMBOL}} exactly is the given solution in this section, which suggest to use a table in a table! BTW: A further problem arose when I notice that "wikitable sortable" did not work properly with this representations (numbers are sorted alphabetically not numerically). Regards, Achim1999 (talk) 11:50, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

There are 4 categories of isotopes, Namely EE, EO, OE, and OO, with the EE,s having the majority of stable isotopes. Also, there are more stable EE's than EO,s and more OE's than OO's So a two column listing starting with the E's on the left side and the O's on the right side and with the stable ones at the top might provide a correlation of the unstable isotopes vis a vis the stable ones.WFPM (talk) 15:35, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

necessary checks and updates

• ⁹⁶Zr should be checked for references of measured half-life.
• Need mass estimates for ¹⁹⁷Os and ¹⁹⁹Ir.

I think firstly we should take only these 2962 experimentally observed nuclides as base which are listed in the 7th edition of Karlsruher Nuklidkarte, which means a data cut-date of about July 2006. Then further added nuclides should be indicated for each case by a reliable source as has been produced at best by an inline-reference in their row! Regards, Achim1999 (talk) 14:37, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Article name

There seems to be a disagreement as to the proper location of this article. It was originally located at Table of nuclides (sorted by half-life) and was moved here. Following that the article was moved back to the original location. I have since moved it back here as this is the proper name as it is in line with WP:LISTNAME, which says that article names should start with "List of" rather than "Table of". Also the use of parentheses is unnecessary as they are not needed for disambigution. If there are any issues with my latest move of the page please discuss them here.--kelapstick (talk) 18:43, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Clarification

"(sorted by half-life)" was a needed addition to "Table of nuclides" because this is ambiguous! Using your WP-rules strictly, (I guess at least -- prefered means not MUST!), would result in "List of nuclides (sorted by half-life)" and thus should(?) be transformed either into "List of nuclides sorted by half-life" OR "List of nuclides" because there is no need to distinguish between different articles named "List of nuclides". Who started this moving war?

I protested about the autocratic behaviour, doing such an important change whithout any anouncement or not to mention agreement on the article's talk page! This can be verified on User_talk:Nergaal#Annoying behaviour. Regards, Achim1999 (talk) 19:21, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

BTW: Now I know I had no chance to see the reason of his move, because simply he left no comment in the logs. I changed the name of the page to the short form "List of nuclides" and gave a comment why I did it and recognized that such a comment is visibale for anybody. Regards, Achim1999 (talk) 19:44, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

tables do not order properly

Tables do not order properly when I click on the header of a column. E.g., 3*10^6 is "larger" than 2*10^12; 100Ru is the lightest nuclide in one table, and 9Be the heaviest. Guess it's just a matter of whether anyone wants to put in the time to format the tables properly. (I sure don't :) ) — kwami (talk) 01:12, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I just noticed this also Adaviel (talk) 20:18, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Many errors

This table contains many errors: most of the polonium and americium half-lives are way out. I haven't checked all of the elements but this whole thing needs to be looked at closely.Ordinary Person (talk) 16:38, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

The energies/masses, as listed contain at least one error. Based on what is presented, Te-130 is actually predicted to be a stable isotope, as the energy given for Xe-130 is actually that for Xe-128. In other words, if I calculate the double-beta decay energy of Te-128 using the energies given in the table for Te-128 and Xe-130 (which of course is "wrong"), I get 2.530 MeV, which is the "right" answer. For Te-130, I cannot get the tabulated double decay energy using any of the listed Xe isotope masses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.17.198.5 (talk) 01:25, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect table

Many nuclides should be removed from the table "Other primordial nuclides measured to be radioactive, or decay products identified (Te-130)". When the half-life is shown as ">something" it means in fact that no radioactivity of the nuclide had ever been observed, and only a lower limit on the half-life time is set experimentally. For example, only W-180 was found to be alpha active in experiment, other 4 primordial tungsten isotopes (182, 183, 184 and 186) were not. They are predicted theoretically to be alpha active (with half-lives >>1e30 yr) but any experimental observation of so rare decays is not possible with current methods. If anybody wants to make a table of all kinematically unstable primordial nuclides (i.e. having positive energy release in one or more kinds of decay), there have to be 65 nuclides for β⁻β⁻ and β⁺β⁺ and almost all nuclides with A>150 for alpha and cluster decays. --V1adis1av (talk) 07:05, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Read the thing, will you? This is not a list of stable nuclides (which itself has a difficult definition), but a list of ALL nuclides with half life > 60 minutes. These ~ 1000 nuclides break down into 1) threoretically stable nuclides (only about 90 exist and all with Z <40), 2) theoretically unstable, but decay never seen (everything past element 40 = zirconium, including the four W "stable" isotopes you mention), 3) decay seen, but no half life determined yet (about 30 nuclides to bring the total to 257), and 4) decay seen AND halflife determined (conventional radionuclides with known half lives, including W-180). It's all broken down for you in a summary table in the second section. SBHarris 18:10, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean "3) decay seen, but no half life determined yet"? If you see a decay in experiment, you can determine half life immediately. If you don't see, you can determine lower limit that had in fact been done for these four W isotopes (as well as for many nuclides in this table). So, if you see in any nuclide data sheets a record like T1/2>2.0e20 yr, it means only that somebody tried to find its decay, but failed (no expected peak in spectrum) and only could conclude that if the half life would be less than 2e20 yr, this decay would be found in given experimental conditions. Thus all nuclides from your group 3) should be simply moved to group 2). --V1adis1av (talk) 09:39, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

In a word, no. Half life cannot be determined without a sufficent number of decays. Seeing one decay at the expected theoretical energy in a collection of N atoms tells you precisely NOTHING about the half life of the decay. So there are decays noted at the correct theoretical energy but we don't know the half life. This is opposed to a different class of nuclides where we have seen ZERO decays so far, so our p <.05 limit on the half life is the simple one calculable by the binomial theorem. One or more decays begins to give a Poissan distribution with distribution parameters which have error limits, and that's a different thing from a number that comes from theory alone. Some of these numbers DO come from theory alone. Some come from watching, but seeing no decays over a time span. Some have decays noted, but not enough to estimate anything from them. And so on. SBHarris 09:50, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

It is a mistake. If you have even 0 (not 1) events in the region of interest of your spectrum, it DOES give you a quantitative information on the half life; namely, you can conclude that the expectation of the number of events is less then 2.3 for 68% confidence level (in the standard Feldman-Cousins approach, assuming also a zero background) and it leads you to the absolutely definitive lower limit on the half life of the nuclide, if you know the number of nuclei in target, the live time of measurement and the detection efficiency. If (in more typical and more difficult case) you have signal+background events, you 1)can or 2)can not discriminate between the effect and the background. In the case 2 you report only the lower limit on half life (something like T_1/2>7x10²⁰ yr with 95% C.L.), in the case 1 you present a positive result, something like T_1/2=5(+3-1)x10²⁰ yr with 95% C.L. or so. But there is no such option like "I do see effect but I cannot estimate the corresponding half life". If you see the effect, it means that you can select it from the background. If you cannot select, you do not see it. Let's look again at the heavy isotopes of W, above mentioned (I am a co-author of the article on their half-life measurements, as well as for a dozen of other potentially radioactive nuclides). All of these tungstens (W-182, 183, 184, 186) have theoretically calculated half-lives more than 1e30 yr for alpha decay, so the experimental lower limits of ~1e20 yr (that are shown in the table and are in fact originated from our article via nuclear databases) cannot be interpreted like that we-saw-their-decays-but-could-not-estimate-half-life. No, we couldn't see even one decay of them even for 100 times longer exposition. These limits mean exactly and only that we guarantee (with some C.L.) that the half lives of corresponding nuclides are more than some values of ~1e20 yr. This is the same situation like for all other nuclides with T1/2>something in the table. No one of them had been experimentally proven to be radioactive. Potentially, they are. So, they should be moved to your group "2) theoretically unstable, but decay never seen". --V1adis1av (talk) 13:53, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

This is the FULL (as for today) list of naturally occurring primordial nuclides which were experimentally found to be radioactive: 40-K (b), 48-Ca (2b), 50-V (b), 76-Ge (2b), 82-Se (2b), 87-Rb (b), 96-Zr (2b), 100-Mo (2b), 113-Cd (b), 116-Cd (2b), 115-In (b), 123-Te (b) 128-Te (2b), 130-Te (2b), 130-Ba (2b), 138-La (b), 144-Nd (a), 150-Nd (2b), 147-Sm (a), 148-Sm (a), 151-Eu (a), 152-Gd (a), 176-Lu (b), 174-Hf (a), 180-W (a), 187-Re (b), 186-Os (a), 190-Pt (a), 209-Bi (a), 232-Th (a, SF), 235-U (a, CE), 238-U (a, 2b, SF). Decays: a is for alpha, b -- for beta (including e-capture and e+), 2b -- for all modes of double beta, SF -- spontaneous fission, CE -- cluster emission. Of course, this list is going to be wider in future with more sensitive experiments; many nuclides were add to it during last two decades (three of them -- with my humble participation). --V1adis1av (talk) 14:40, 7 December 2010 (UTC) (I don't mention here 244-Pu because there exist now only tiny traces of this primordial nuclide). --V1adis1av (talk) 14:52, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I like your argument and you are the expert. Could you please check over the article primordial nuclide. It appears the table at the end corresponds exactly with your list above (though it has 32 radioactive primordials, not 31, due to including Pu-244). As for this article, we'll have to do some separating. Hold on. SBHarris 20:53, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

In the article primordial nuclide, I would also make some small corrections related to extra-precision of half-lives (4 digits is too many, if we have only two or three in original measurements) and to decay modes (there is something like @ instead of alpha etc.). But generally speaking, that article seems correct. Concerning this article, I want to ask, do you want to keep the numbers in the first columns of the tables? The principle of ordering is not absolutely clear for me, and any changing in order of rows (for example, if radioactivity of some nuclide would be found) would result in massive re-numbering of the rows by hands. I propose to drop these row numbers and/or to order nuclides by their (A,Z) in every table. --V1adis1av (talk) 11:54, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the number of significant figures here is stange and not reasonable. I didn't make up this table, and the source of the data is the one given at the end of the article, which I haven't checked. I don't know if it gives too many sig figures, or if they arrive from whoever made up this table. Feel free to correct any to the number in your sources, since I don't have any that are claimed to be "better." Certainly the theoretical half life values to many significant figures, is crazy.

As to the ordering, you can see that for the 256 "stable" nuclides it is done by theoretical most probable mode of decay, if it did decay. First are the 90 that are theoretically stable (except to proton decay), then those that are unstable only to spontaneous fission (SF), and so on. If you reorder these, I would ask only to separate out the first 90 (since this isn't done anywhere else) and then the remaining 256-90 = 166 can be done any way you think best. I think it's interesting to do it this way that it's now done, but A,Z as is done in other articles (see also the various table of nuclides articles) is possible. But remember that this is not the only nuclide article, so it's nice if we don't duplicate the way of ordering. The 29 nuclides that were mistakenly separated out will have to go back into the 227 stable nuclides to make 256 classically stable nuclides (actually, putting these 29 back in by hand, involves the most work, so let me know how you want to do the other 166 "possibly radioactive" ones). The next 32 are the known radioactive primordials in the article mentioned above, and I think they should be in order of half-life (as they are in that article), especially since the rest of the list continues that way, with a natural break between Pu-244 and Nb-92. It isn't that much work to renumber these by hand, since if we find a radioactive one, it will just add to this list of 32 and disappear from the list of 256. If you worry, you can reorder the 256 to make sure that the last two or three are the once you suspect of being next to be removed, due to detection of decay. Renumbering the list of 32 priordials is not hard.

I should add to be clear that the category of "known radioactive but halflife unknown" which has 29 members in the summary table, will have to be deleted completely. I'll do that as I can.

Finally, you've listed Ba-130 as a radioactive primordial above. Where is that published? SBHarris 00:46, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

OK, I will start tomorrow. Ba-130 (and other adopted double beta half lives for known decays) you can find here, its decay had been discovered with geochemical methods few years ago. --V1adis1av (talk) 02:32, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I have added Ba-130 to the primordial nuclide article and removed it from the stable isotope article. This gives us 255 "stable" nuclides, and I have to go back and change everything at a number of articles. I haven't yet discussed Ba-130 at isotopes of barium, so if you have the geochemical paper, it would be helpful. I've never actually seen a double K-capture nuclide. Thank you for the reference-- are you perhaps "Database Manager: Boris Pritychenko, NNDC, Brookhaven National Laboratory"? It is interesting that the Ba-130 half life of 2e21 seconds is close to a "gap" in the logarithmic progression of these long lifed radionuclides. We don't have any radionuclides with half lives of 1e20 seconds or so. One suspects just empirically that there are one or two in there that haven't been discovered. I still have not disintangled the "stable" nuclides from the radioactives in this article, but will tackle that as soon as I see how you're planning to present them. By the way, there are now 33 radioactive primordials in that article, because it contains not only Pu-244 but also the longer-lived Sm-146. Can you confirm that Sm-146 has been observed in nature or not? SBHarris 04:34, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

That's a very interesting question! As well as how it is known that some of the determined "radioactive" EE62Sm146 might have some amount of stable isotopes, with the rest having a slightly higher halflife value?WFPM (talk) 22:35, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Dec 10 note. Okay, I've done the separation of the 33 radioactive primordials, from the 28 stables that had lower half-live limits given, but had NOT yet been found to be radioactive. I kind of like having all these where they are at this point, since the latter group has perhaps the 28 best candidates to be found experimentally radioactive in the future. In particular, note that the last three with the shortest time limits are Ce-138, Ce-136, and Os-184. Can you confirm that these are "stable" nuclides under investigation since they have the shortest "calculated" half lives of all the stables? Or are these the shortest limits known by measurement, which is what the article now reads (perhaps incorrectly). In either case, if this is so, then the way this table is set up, is indeed interesting and useful, do you not think? SBHarris 04:15, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Dec 12. By the way, see also List of elements by stability of isotopes which you may have missed. There are already many articles that list nuclides in order of Z. SBHarris 22:55, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

"Running total" inconsistency

Naturally occurring nuclides with half-lives < 1 h (such as At-214 to 219) are not included in the table, so the claim in the summary table of a "running total" of 905 (including the naturally occurring ones) is apparently false, since the list already has 905 entries without them. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 22:32, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

You have a point. You're talking about those few very short half lived nuclides that are part of natural decay chains, and that have been detected, but didn't get into this list since their half lives are too short. Fr-223 (22 min) and those 6 naturally-occuring At nuclides you mention, none of which have half lives over a minute (of which 3 have been detected, but have all 6?). We'll have to put in a caveat that the list includes only naturally occuring nuclides with half-lives > 1 hour, and a very few (like Fr and At nuclides) with shorter half lives naturally occur, but are NOT listed due to extreme rarity and instability. Can you think of any others? SBHarris 02:05, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Maybe some of the trans-plutonium isotopes that have recently been determined to be natural (see Wikiproject Elements discussion)? I don't really know if all 6 At isotopes have been detected, I gathered the info only from the astatine article.

Actually I would like these shortlived natural isotopes to be listed in this article as well (in a separate section), I think being natural makes them notable enough. But I don't know either where a complete list of these could be found... --Roentgenium111 (talk) 20:12, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

None of those trans-plutonium isotopes (Am to Cf) need to be added, since they all have half-lives > 1 h and are hence already here. (Even ²⁵³Es, which would be created by the beta decay of natural ²⁵³Cf, is already here.) There are no missing isotopes of any actinides. But looking at isotopes from Tl to Ra, the missing isotopes are: ²⁰⁶Tl, ²⁰⁷Tl, ²⁰⁸Tl, ²¹⁰Tl, ²¹¹Pb, ²¹⁴Pb, ²¹¹Bi, ²¹⁴Bi, ²¹⁵Bi, ²¹¹Po, ²¹²Po, ²¹⁴Po, ²¹⁵Po, ²¹⁶Po, ²¹⁸Po, ²¹⁴At, ²¹⁵At, ²¹⁶At, ²¹⁷At, ²¹⁸At, ²¹⁸Rn, ²¹⁹Rn, ²²⁰Rn, and ²²²Ra. I haven't checked for elements with Z ≤ 80. Double sharp (talk) 14:22, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

There don't seem to be any for elements with Z ≤ 80. Double sharp (talk) 11:06, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Sources

"Sources" section looks very poorly formatted, unorthodox, and contains a sentence fragment. I'm personally not sure how to bring this up to Wikipedia compliance so I just wanted to point it out. 24.190.8.129 (talk) 21:00, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

I've fixed some of this. You can't avoid a sentence fragment when saying look at reference ^[3]. Unless you put a period in, after a superscript, which look funny. SBHarris 22:09, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Request for comment

Should this article be just a list? Are there natural sections of nuclides? Is the counting of natural non-primordials (cosmogenics + radiogenics) inappropriate?

Hi

Just recently you added a reference for Xe-136 half-time detection. Unluckily it is the first to break the readability of the table. I would suggest add a further column generally to add references nuclide-specific. Many(!) data are disputable, even in physics review level.

But what is more important, I worry who added this nonsense (to be precise, off-topic and ill-defined) about short-living natural nuclides? Why are they mentioned in this article, at all? It is highly dubious, because any nuclide which can be created by cosmic rays will be produced sooner or later! It is only a question how long and with which effort you try to detect them. Thus, I think almost all sentences where "natural short-living" occured should be deleted in this article, IMHO. :-/

The first paragraph of this message triggered to write this message to you, but I always thought whether and when to expand this list further. I stopped when expanding the list up to half-life of 1 hour, because to my knowledge all nuclides with Z < 96 which will still be dedected will have half-lives < 1 h -- rather good models exist for years (good enough to get these limits). There will surely be further nuclides with Z >= 96 which half-lives > 1 h -- noone knows how many. Critical are the half-lifes of the unknown nuclides Pt-204, Hg-210 and Po-220 (the next are Pu-247, Pu-248, Cm-252) and this status now keeps since more than 10 years. :-( I wonder whether it makes sense to add a new batch of nuclides, all those up to ... X min half-life?

²⁰⁴Pt, ²¹⁰Hg, ²²⁰Po, and ²⁴⁷Pu are now known. :D Double sharp (talk) 12:16, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I like to hear your opinion to all 3 points -- I'm afraid there are much too less experts on wikipedia, that it would make sense to add all literature references for the data. Thanks, Achim1999 (talk) 21:19, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. To address all 3 questions: 1) The reference for Xe-136 was not intended to be a general reference, but because the disagreement came up in the context of "which radisotope has the longest measured half life" as discussed on the TALK:isotope page. It seems that the Japanese have claimed to see double beta decay in Xe-136 at 10^26 sec, but a large liquid xenon detector has ruled this out to better than 10^32 seconds, which means Xe-136 is stable as far as we can tell (we know its stability to as high a number as most of the "stable" nuclides in its mass range). So this disagreement in measurement of more than a 6 logs (1 million) is rather violent. It moves Xe-136 from observational radioactive to observationally stable, which is a big jump. I tought it was worth a note. It changes all the numbers in the other tables as well-- for example if Xe-136 is stable then there are 256 stable nuclides, not 255 (though the number of primordials at 288 doesn't change, as you just get a radioactive primordial nuclide moving to the stable class, so there are 32 of these not 33). Yes, I know this number is changing all the time, but we attempt to keep track-- it's more worthwhile than the other counting issues you mention.

Well, I always try to get the things more objective. Your main reasons seems to be that this is a rare event -- I would not call it rare :) -- and more that it is 6 logs in magnitude. I like to reply it is either 1 magnitude (base 1 million) or 20 magnitude (base 2) -- only to point you to your subjectivity. :-/ General those measurements at the end of 0/1 events have errors reaching into the 100 % - range. :-( Anyway, this running number, yeah it is in a certain sense very important, would only be changed by 1 for say 100 nuclides (I'm too lazy to look for the exact number). And this is a small change compared to the table as a total. Anyway, you opened the box of Pandora if making references directly into the measured values in the table. Why not make an own last column? :)

A last column with a reference if needed is fine with me. I'm just not great with column markup language. Remember this is not "my article". I did some counting for it, but a lot of it needs fixing. The half lives have far too many sig digits for example and that's surely wrong. But I haven't the time to fix it.

The objective vs. subjective part comes the sorities paradox where a mere qualitative change becomes a qualitative change. Usually this is because of physiology-- at some temperature a thing goes from warm to HOT! and you get pain where you didn't before. In other cases you exceed a threshhold in human observation power like ability to measure a half live longer than x, and nuclides with longer half lives than that, we call "stable". Of the 255 of these, there are only 90 that are energetically stable. You can see that everything about Nb-41 can fission-- we just haven't seen it. The 6 log disagreement about Xe-136 moves it from a qualitative class to another-- it's not "just" a number thing. When Bi-209 was found radioactive, that was a big thing. It does no good at all you say that Pb-208 is probably radioactive also. We must go by what we have measured, to some extent, in case our theories are wrong.

Then firstly you should remove this "proton-decay" speculation-remark (which is HIGHLY questionable for bounded (inside nuclides) protons), which worried me also. People so often measure with two different scale here. :-( Achim1999 (talk)

2) Some short-lived (non-primordial) naturally-occuring nuclides are very important-- atmospheric cosmogenic nuclide Be-7, C-14, Cl-36, I-129 and radiogenic nuclides like radon and radium. You will notice that I didn't put them in a table or even list them, but we probably should somewhere (not by half life, but by abundance or activity in the environment). The total number 339 comes from this source: [1] but it's not set in stone, as these include the classic decay chain radiogenics from thorium, U-235 and U-238, and the most well-known cosmogenics like Be-7 and C-14. You're probably right that everything that can be made cosmogenically will be made in atmosphere and upper crust, but there's a HUGE gap between the longest lived primordial Pu-244 and the longest lived purely upper soil cosmogenics like Al-26, Ca-41, etc. Somebody should add up the cosmogenics easily found, along with decay chain radiogenics easily found (perhaps with half lives over 1000 years?) and put them in a table. I really want common radiogenics + cosmogenics. It will always be expanding, but most tables in Wikipedia are expanding. These are important because they are useful, notable, and have been known for a long time.

Sorry, you miss my point: the table and the article was intended for a sorted list by half-lifes -- absolutely neutral, nothing to do with humans (or biology) or the fact that our earth crust is made up by certain nuclides! :-( Thus, I call them "off-topic". Moreover what do you call HUGE? Considering half-lifes of known nuclides between 10^-23 sec and >> 10^23 sec then your mention gap is a really tiny gap. I feel a bid sad about such subjectivity among wikipedians. I know most are people from the street, many want-to-be scientists, no proven physists, but this doesn't comfort me. :-/

Again, even a table with totally objective numerical ordering has natural "gaps" in it, like Saturn's rings. One is very great gap between Pu-244 with the 81 million year half life which is found on Earth, dating from the beginning of the solar system (and the many supernovas that formed the debris our solar system condensed from), and the next nuclide with a 35 million year half-live, Nb-92, which has never been found naturally on Earth (some from artificial nuclear fission in weapons is known), and then to any nuclides with a shorter half life. No other shorter lived nuclides are known except decay products, cosmic ray products, or artificials. Please read primordial nuclide. There are only 32 or 33 of these detected primordials that are radioactive. That's not many. Are there more nuclides than that on Earth? Of course! In theory, every nuclide is present on Earth, if you could see every last atom, as natural nuclear fission happens, and it makes every possible nuclide, in quantities a few atoms at a time. But that's not very interesting. Pointing out that every nuclide you can think of is in your body and in seawater and so on, tells you very little. You are now looking at the world without filters. To point out that the Earth's atmosphere has no upper limit, and in theory extends throughout the solar system, is impossible to refute and indeed is doubtless true. But of what use is it to look at it that way.

3) I'm not adverse to a table with isotopes with half lives shorter than 1 hour, but we have about 1000 now and there are several thousand more known, so it's a big job. But surely cosmogenics and radiogenics in the environment with half lives of thousands or even hundreds of thousand years are more interesting? SBHarris 22:45, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Who told you to judge gaps to YOUR subjective feeling to be "great" ? Not to mention to start interpretated what these numbers/hlaf-lifes means on eart-development! :-( You also make no sections in other nuclide tables about certain isotop sets because you can justify subjective reasoned extrema/especialities. :-( To be specify: This "short-living natural nuclides" harms the structure of the arcticle. Achim1999 (talk) 10:42, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

You want an interesting article? Why not inserting many colored pictures? :-(

We do have many colored pictures to make interesting articles. Look at fluorine and oxygen. We're writing an encyclopedia and it does not contain all information, but a distillation of it, which means a summary, which means it's subjective. It contains the most important and interesting information, with sorting and subjectivity.

Sorry, I thought you would have noticed the irony in my above statement. I miss-judged. Achim1999 (talk) 10:42, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

That is interesting is SO subjective and depends on the interest of the actual reader -- as you know.

I DO know. But there's no getting away from the problem of turning what we know of the world into a subjectively sorted type of information, on the basis of some type of average human interest. Anything else is almost completely useless. A total sorting of "facts" by quantitation would be difficult, because the measures we pick to quantitate BY, are themselves often subjective. When we got done, the result would not be very useful, as there are many qualitative virtues that are necessary for life, that the universe is not interested in. We add those values by virtue of being biological organisms with needs.

I'm not afraid of this "big" -- I'm afraid that these running number will far more changing than now -- and people will jump in, change values according to different literature values, edit-wars will break out. Therefore there must be indeed for each nuclide a comment column, where an explicit reference to physical review (or similar high quality journal) must be given for each cited half-life and decay-mode! THIS is the real work to get a high quality table (which I'm really afraid of).

Fear not. Hang around WP a while more and you'll see everything. Please read WP:LAME carefully. Wikipedia represents a great deal of work, to be sure, but it's all volunteer, so if you think you'll open up a can of worms and make something that will force people to work hard here, think again! Nobody does anything but volunteer, here.

Sorry, if I sounded too harsh. You did anyway a great job over the years on wikipedia. :) Achim1999 (talk) 23:33, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. But you need to learn to "let go." You've done more work on list of nuclides than any editor except me [2], but neither of us "owns" it. Don't be afraid of changes being made to your favorite article. The only cure for that is to pick out another article and work on that instead. You can't preserve anything on WP, and it's not good to care too much for anything here. This is not your family home or your kids or a book you wrote. It's a collective effort. Right under the "save page" button it says "If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here." And they mean it.

You only have about 1100 edits (about 3% of mine), and 20% of what you've done is distribed equally to just two articles-- Noble metal and List of nuclides. [3]. That's too much. You need to diversify and avoid that feeling of ownership. And read WP:OWN. It helps. SBHarris 00:25, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I already abondened my ownerships/feelings 3 years ago! I see only the ill-bending of the article which hurts me. (Giving the folk games, but not education, is the reason I had withdrawn to seriously support wikipedia with my mathematical expertise, and I'm not the only expert who decided so.)

Thus my point is total different in judgment. I would be happy if I only put/editing 5 articles in wikipedia each about 20% of my contribution. I like to see high quality articles, not many low level articles, like it is since years. And this is my point: Wikipedia suffers much of low-leveling articles which some were created and intended by experts to set and kept on a high level! This develeopment sucks and withdraw me and other experts from support wikimedia and other people having too much time but too less knowledge to be able to recognize this. Achim1999 (talk) 10:56, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Moreover, you seem also to unwilling to stay objective to the facts but like to judge subjectively about adding/deleting content to a strictly objective intended topic. Achim1999 (talk) 10:56, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)I know that sometimes, when I edit, it can seem like every edit done to an article that you're working on is vandalism. When working on an article, it can be tempting to try to stop other people from editing the article, as it can change what you had planned. It's a natural feeling. However, in the long run, the contributions others provide are almost always good for the article, and even though you may have to change your plans for the article a bit, the added text is most often something you overlooked and would not have added otherwise, thus improving the article. Achim1999, ahthough every edit to an article you are working on can seem like vandalism, they most often help the article. StringTheory¹¹ 03:19, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Stable isotopes

H-1, H-2 He-3, He-4 Li-6, Li-7 Be-9 B-10, B-11 C-12, C-13 N-14, N-15 O-16, O-17, O-18 F-19 Ne-20, Ne-21, Ne-22 Na-23 Mg-24, Mg-25, Mg-26 Al-27 Si-28, Si-29, Si-30 P-31 S-32, S-33, S-34, S-36 Cl-35, Cl-37 (Ar-36), Ar-38, Ar-40 K-39, K-41 (Ca-40), Ca-42, Ca-43, Ca-44, (Ca-46) Sc-45 Ti-46, Ti-47, Ti-48, Ti-49, Ti-50 V-51 (Cr-50), Cr-52, Cr-53, Cr-54 Mn-55 (Fe-54), Fe-56, Fe-57, Fe-58 Co-59 (Ni-58), Ni-60, Ni-61, Ni-62, Ni-64 Cu-63, Cu-65 (Zn-64), Zn-66, Zn-67, Zn-68, (Zn-70) Ga-69, Ga-71 Ge-70, Ge-72, Ge-73, Ge-74 As-75 (Se-74), Se-76, Se-77, Se-78, (Se-80) Br-79, Br-81 (Kr-78), Kr-80, Kr-82, Kr-83, Kr-84, (Kr-86) Rb-85 (Sr-84), Sr-86, Sr-87, Sr-88 Y-89 Zr-90, Zr-91, Zr-92, (Zr-94) Nb-93 (Mo-92), Mo-94, Mo-95, Mo-96, Mo-97, (Mo-98) Tc-->No stable isotopes! (Ru-96), Ru-98, Ru-99, Ru-100, Ru-101, Ru-102, (Ru-104) Rh-103 (Pd-102), Pd-104, Pd-105, Pd-106, Pd-108, (Pd-110) Ag-107, Ag-109 (Cd-106), (Cd-108), Cd-110, Cd-111, Cd-112, (Cd-114) In-113 (Sn-112), Sn-114, Sn-115, Sn-116, Sn-117, Sn-118, Sn-119, Sn-120, (Sn-122), (Sn-124) Sb-121, Sb-123 (Te-120), Te-122, Te-124, Te-125, Te-126 I-127 (Xe-124), (Xe-126), Xe-128, Xe-129, Xe-130, Xe-131, Xe-132, (Xe-134) Cs-133 (Ba-132), Ba-134, Ba-135, Ba-136, Ba-137, Ba-138 La-139 (Ce-136), (Ce-138), Ce-140, (Ce-142) Pr-141 Nd-142, (Nd-143), (Nd-145), (Nd-146), (Nd-148) Pm-->No stable isotopes! (Sm-144), (Sm-149), (Sm-150), (Sm-152), (Sm-154) (Eu-153) (Gd-154), (Gd-155), Gd-156, Gd-157, Gd-158, (Gd-160) Tb-159 (Dy-156), (Dy-158), Dy-160, (Dy-161), (Dy-162), (Dy-163), Dy-164 (Ho-165) (Er-162), (Er-164), (Er-166), (Er-167), (Er-168), (Er-170) (Tm-169) (Yb-168), (Yb-170), (Yb-171), (Yb-172), (Yb-173), (Yb-174), (Yb-176) (Lu-175) (Hf-176), (Hf-177), (Hf-178), (Hf-179), (Hf-180) (Ta-180m), (Ta-181) (W-182), (W-183), (W-184), (W-186) (Re-185) (Os-184), (Os-187), (Os-188), (Os-189), (Os-190), (Os-192) (Ir-191), (Ir-193) (Pt-192), (Pt-194), (Pt-195), (Pt-196), (Pt-198) (Au-197) (Hg-196), (Hg-198), (Hg-199), (Hg-200), (Hg-201), (Hg-202), (Hg-204) (Tl-203), (Tl-205) (Pb-204), (Pb-206), (Pb-207), (Pb-208) Bi or heavier-->No more stable isotopes! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.126.202.81 (talk) 15:38, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Half life of tellurium-130

In http://arxiv.org/pdf/1104.3716.pdf the half life of tellurium-130 is given as 7.0*10^20 years, which is 2.2*10^28 seconds. The table says 2.777*10^26 seconds, which is a bit small. I'm aware that it's not possible to update this table every time a new result is found, but this is a significant difference. Also the decay energy seems too small. The Interactive Chart of Nuclides (Brookhaven National Laboratory) gives 2.527510 MeV whereas the table gives 0.868 MeV. Mollwollfumble (talk) 07:30, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Okay, WP:SOFIXIT. I actually don't have a problem with fixing things item-by-item when figures vary greatly, as above. SBHarris 18:48, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Cerium-136

How is its binding energy so high? The quoted value is higher than that of ⁵⁶Fe! Is the initial "1" a mistake? Double sharp (talk) 12:09, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Removed the 1. The result might not be the right value, but at least now it isn't blatantly wrong. Double sharp (talk) 12:10, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Inconsistencies between "Decay mode" explanation and column entries

The decay mode explanation before the tables includes some entries which (as far as I can tell) are never used in the tables, and misses some entries which are. Specifically:

• Electron Capture and Proton/neutron decay are listed but unused
• The terms "K" and "KK" are used in the tables but never explained
• Internal Conversion is listed as "IC" in the explanation but (I assume) just "I" in the tables.

Lawrencium-266

Recently discovered at GSI (7 alpha decays from confirmed ²⁹⁴117): half-life 11 h. Needs to be added (making it 902 nuclides now). Double sharp (talk) 11:36, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Added, as position #698. But now the numbers for all the shorter-lived nuclei need to be bumped up by one, and there are enough that the task looks daunting. Could someone or some bot do it? Double sharp (talk) 20:54, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

In the long run, the easiest way is probably to remove the numbers and add a separate ranking column instead, as described here. Then one only needs to add a single number whenever a new nuclides is added, and not change hundreds of numbers. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 14:10, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Finally fixed the numbers, naturally before noticing the talk section below detailing omissions like ¹⁴⁸Pm. Well played, Murphy. Double sharp (talk) 06:19, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

This page has no performance issues

This page loads in less than a second, and has no performance issues. This page has 740 repetitive instances of a scientific notation like 1.2345×10¹⁶.

When this page showed up on Wbm1058's performance patrol logs, I replaced the 740 template calls like

{{val|1.2345|e=16}} → 1.2345×10¹⁶

with straight html like

1.2345 &times; 10¹⁶ → 1.2345 × 10¹⁶

We then ran some tests and made some improvements to Val, to bring a 20-sec load time to 8 sec.

I just now tried replacing those same 740 calls with

1.2345{{e|16}} → 1.2345×10¹⁶

Even though {{e}} specializes in the exact cases mentioned above, it took 4 sec. to load.

I will save an e version to the database, for a possible use, but this page is perfect for html, and to my knowledge no "general" template can complete with html performance at this concentration. (Maybe a specific, targeted module, not sure.) Look for the val and e versions in the history near the edit summary "template e version". Perhaps when Val is transformed into a Lua module, we'll be back. — CpiralCpiral 04:49, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

{{Val}} as a Lua module is back, and loads in under 3 seconds. — CpiralCpiral 16:55, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Updated half-lives from NUBASE2012

For the 640 nuclides in the list with half-life > 1 hour I have compared the reported values with those in the latest NUBASE2012 database (G. Audi et al., `The NUBASE2012 evaluation of nuclear properties', Chinese Physics C, Vol. 36, No. 12, 2012), which are believe are more recent than the ones in the table. Agreement is very good. For 600 nuclides agreement between NUBASE2012 and the present table is better than 1% and for 627 nuclides is better than 10%. Of the 13 remaining nuclides whose half-lives differ by more than 10% five have huge half-lives > 2e26 seconds. Here are the remaining 8 nuclides, decending order of half-life:

Nuclide	Table	NUBASE2012	diff as %
Sm-146	3.25E+15	2.15E+15	51.5
Tc-97	8.20E+13	1.33E+14	-38.3
Se-79	9.31E+12	1.06E+13	-11.9
Ni-59	2.40E+12	3.19E+12	-24.7
Si-32	4.17E+09	4.83E+09	-13.6
Po-209	3.95E+09	3.22E+09	22.7
Rh-102m	9.15E+07	1.18E+08	-22.5
Md-260	2.75E+06	2.40E+06	14.5

Overall my conclusion is that the data in the present version of the table is completely OKAY. Perhaps values could be updated to the NUBASE2012 ones (especially / only) for the 8 nuclides above, but I haven't made the change. L0rents (talk) 09:39, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

@L0rents: With regard to ²⁰⁹Po: the value of 3.95E+09 is from a 2013 experiment, and so would probably not be reflected in NUBASE 2012. Dunno about the other WP values, which may well be outdated (we cite NUBASE 2003 a lot, probably because it was the latest when we started these articles, and never updated it?). Double sharp (talk) 15:26, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

33 missing nuclides with half-lives > 1 hour

Looking at the NUBASE2012 database I have found 33 nuclides with half-lives greater than 1 hour which are not reported in the present list. In all cases they are nuclear isomers of elements which are currently in the list. Maybe they should be incorporated in the list? Almost certainly there'll be other missing nuclides with half-lives less than 1h, but I haven't checked. Here are the ones I found, in order of increasing Z and increasing A:

Nuclide	Half-life
Nb-93m	16.12 y
Nb-95m	3.61 d
Tc-97m	91 d
Rh-101m	4.34 d
Rh-102	207 d
Cd-113m	13.89 y
Cd-115	53.46 h
Sn-117m	14 d
Sn-119m	293.1 d
Sn-121	27.03 h
Te-121	19.17 d
Te-123m	119.2 d
Te-125m	57.4 d
Xe-129m	8.88 d
Xe-131m	11.84 d
Xe-133m	2.198 d
Ba-133m	38.9 h
Ba-135m	28.11 h
Pm-148	5.368 d
Tb-156m	24.4 h
Ho-166	26.824 h
Lu-174m	142 d
Lu-177	6.647 d
Hf-178m2	31 y
Hf-179m2	25.05 d
Re-186	3.7183 d
Ir-192	73.827 d
Ir-193m	10.53 d
Pt-193m	4.33 d
Pt-195m	4.01 d
Au-198m2	2.272 d
Bi-210	5.012 d
Es-254m	39.3 h

That would make the total 896 + 33 = 929. Double sharp (talk) 06:20, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Noted some of these omissions too, which includes some significant isotopes for nuclear medicine (e.g. ir-192) so far added the 16 with HL over 7 days. Don't have the energy values. Marqaz (talk) 23:08, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Actually the table above only cover missing nuclides with half lives over 1 hour. There area further 60 (I think - need verifying) missing according to Nubase2012 - include the most important medical radiotracer 99mTC _ taking the total to 989. Not sure I have the energy to enter them all unless I can find a more automated system! Will update the introduction to make it less definitiveMarqaz (talk) 08:49, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Nuclide	Half-life	decay mode
197mHg	23.8 h	IT=91.4 7;EC=8.6 7
248mBk	23.7 h	B-=70 5;EC=30 5;A=0.001#
236mNp	22.5 h	EC=50 3;B-=50 3
154Tb	21.5 h	B+~100;B-<0.1
95Tc	20. h	B+=100
194Ir	19.3 h	B-=100
119Te	16.1 h	EC=97.94 5;e+=2.06 5
242Am	16. h	B-=82.7 3;EC=17.3 3
87mY	13.4 h	IT=98.43 10;B+=1.57 10
191mOs	13.1 h	IT=100
150mEu	12.8 h	B-=89 2;B+=11 2;...
182mRe	12.7 h	B+=100
195Hg	10.5 h	B+=100
183mOs	9.9 h	B+=85 2;IT=15 2
196nAu	9.6 h	IT=100
127Te	9.35 h	B-=100
152mEu	9.31 h	B-=72 4;B+=28 4
58mCo	9.1 h	IT=100
137Ce	9. h	B+=100
180Ta	8.15 h	EC=86 3;B-=14 3
93mMo	6.85 h	IT~100;B+=0.12 1
99mTc	6.01 h	IT~100;B-=0.0037 6
189mOs	5.81 h	IT=100
180mHf	5.47 h	IT~100;B-=0.3 1
156nTb	5.3 h	IT=?;B+=?
99mRh	4.7 h	B+~100;IT<0.16
115mIn	4.49 h	IT=95.0 7;B-=5.0 7
85mKr	4.48 h	B-=78.6 4;IT=21.4 4
44Sc	3.97 h	B+=100
193Hg	3.8 h	B+=100
176mLu	3.66 h	B-~100;EC=0.095 16
202mPb	3.54 h	IT=90.5 5;B+=9.5 5
90Yxm	3.19 h	IT~100;B-=0.0018 2
190pIr	3.09 h	B+=91.4 2;IT=8.6 2
134mCs	2.91 h	IT=100
87mSr	2.82 h	IT~100;EC=0.30 8
85Y	2.68 h	B+=100
195Ir	2.5 h	B-=100
117Cd	2.49 h	B-=100
250mEs	2.22 h	B+~100;A ?
129mBa	2.16 h	B+~100;IT=?
195mOs	2. h	B-=?;IT=?
186mIr	1.92 h	B+~75;IT~25
198mTl	1.87 h	B+=55.9 23;IT=44.1 23
83Krn	1.83 h	IT=100
113mIn	1.66 h	IT=100
133Ce	1.62 h	B+=100
152rEu	1.6 h	IT=100
197mPt	1.59 h	IT=96.7 4;B-=3.3 4
196mTl	1.41 h	B+=96.2 4;IT=3.8 4
132mI	1.39 h	IT=86 2;B-=14 2
266Db	1.33 h	A ?;SF ?;B+ ?
129Te	1.16 h	B-=100
110mIn	1.15 h	B+=100
85mSr	1.13 h	IT=86.6 4;B+=13.4 4
190mIr	1.12 h	IT=100
204nPb	1.12 h	IT=100
89mNb	1.1 h	B+=100
182Re	1.07 h	B+=100
182mHf	1.03 h	B-=54 2;IT=46 2

I've fixed the numbers to 649, covering all the nuclides with half-lives over a day. I too am unsure if I am up to adding all this! Double sharp (talk) 14:00, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Have now added missing nuclides under one day and reformatted with extra columns etc. Marqaz (talk) 00:35, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Nuclides that are not even known

It is sad that there are substantial gaps in our knowledge of the nuclide chart after the actinides. It is quite all right for NUBASE to fill the gaps with predicted data. It is not all right to, like we do here, put these predicted data (e.g. ²⁶⁹Db) on a par with actually known data, and it is definitely not all right to not update them when they are contradicted by later experiments (e.g. ²⁶⁶Rf). (And, because this is really unwieldy and hard to maintain, I might even cut off the list at one day instead of one hour.) Double sharp (talk) 08:52, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. I have removed four nuclides removed in redone table as no firm evidence for half life (²⁶⁹Db, ²⁶⁶Rf, ²⁶⁵Rf, ²⁶⁶Lr) ²⁶⁷Db has been left in although there appear to be two incompatible figures for its half life (1.2 or 4 hours) but both apparently reasonably accurate estimates. Please don't cut the list without discussing here. Marqaz (talk) 00:35, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

²⁶⁶Lr has actually been synthesised as a daughter of ²⁹⁴Ts, so I would leave it in even though the half-life is not well-known yet. Agreed on the others. Double sharp (talk) 02:47, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

I have restored ²⁶⁶Lr. Double sharp (talk) 10:32, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

²⁷⁰Db should probably also be added; the half-life is not well-known but all estimates I am aware of equal or exceed 1 hour (with error bars, of course). Double sharp (talk) 03:38, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Is the "Te-130" in the "Introduction" an error for "Te-128"?

Under the heading "Introduction" this sentence is found: "These have been measured to be radioactive, or decay products have been identified (Te-130, Ba-130).". However, tellurium-130 has been observationally measured to be radioactive, see https://arxiv.org/abs/1104.3716, but on the other hand, as far as I have been able to find, tellurium-128 has not. Probably this is an error, so that "Te-130" should be replaced with "Te-128" in the sentence cited above. Could maybe someone who is able to be sure about this correct the sentence, or, if I am wrong, correct me? /Erik Ljungstrand (Sweden). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.241.158.201 (talk) 06:45, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Given that the direct observation of the double beta decay of ¹³⁰Te dates only to 2011, it is possible that the statement was accurate at the time of writing. It should indeed now be edited to reference ¹²⁸Te instead; I'll make the changes. Double sharp (talk) 08:32, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

 Done Thank you! Double sharp (talk) 08:36, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the correction! But on the other hand, another sentence under the heading "Introduction" reads: "If a decay has been predicted theoretically but never observed experimentally, it is given in parentheses.", and another one begins: "Such nuclides are considered to be 'stable' until a decay has been observed ...". In my opinion, this is still the case for both tellurium-128 and barium-130, which very probably are long-lived radionuclides, but, as no actual decay has ever been observed experimentally, should still be considered as observationally stable nuclides; if so, the number of those should of course be 255 (and not 253). /Erik Ljungstrand (Sweden). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.241.158.201 (talk) 10:20, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

For these two indirect geochemical observation of the decay exists via finding an excess of the putative daughters. This works because both decay to Xe isotopes, which are hard to explain as inclusions otherwise. It is like K-Ar dating, except that here you know the age of the rock by some other means already, and then calculate back from there the half-life of Te-128 and Ba-130 (since you already know how much Xe there is there, that there is no other possible source for it, and how long it took to accumulate to the observed amounts). I would keep these as unstable nuclides, as all the sources on these double beta decay experiments I have seen concur that this sort of indirect detection is enough to establish radioactivity, though it would of course be nice to see it happen in "real time". This is why the second sentence you quote goes on to say "...has been observed in some fashion" (emphasis mine); I've attempted to clarify the first one in the article. Double sharp (talk) 10:26, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

I understand the reasoning behind, and I thought that "in some fashion" had the meaning which you explained (therefore I omitted that part of the sentence), but in my own opinion, this is not "experimentally observed" actual decay, only some (rather firm) indicia that the nuclides in question probably are long-lived radioactive, and so, in my opinion, they should still be considered observationally stable nuclides until their decays have really been experimentally observed, like e.g. the double-epsilon decay of krypton-78 seems to have done. /Erik Ljungstrand (Sweden). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.241.158.201 (talk) 12:00, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

I agree, but we have to follow the sources, and if they consider these determinations to count, then we have to follow too by Wikipedia policy. (At least, given the recent detection of Kr-78 and the recent experiments for Xe-134, we should soon be able to observe the double beta decay of Ba-130 explicitly; Te-128 should take a while longer, though.) Double sharp (talk) 14:08, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Cosmogenic lead-205?

In this list lead-205 (n:o 291) has a comment, "CG", which stands for "Cosmogenic nuclide". However, until now I have been unable to find any actual scientific paper which reports lead-205 as an observed cosmogenic nuclide (but the LOREX neutrino project managers obviously seem to be sure that lead-205 can - and will - be found "live" in the lorandite at Allchar mine, Macedonia). Do you know about any reliable paper which reports observed "live" cosmogenic lead-205 on Earth? On the other hand, plutonium-244 seems to be firmly established as a cosmogenic nuclide on Earth, see https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms6956, that is, cosmogenic in the same way as iron-60, not produced in situ on Earth, but "arrived" from space via meteorites. /Erik Ljungstrand (Sweden). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.241.158.201 (talk) 12:20, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

10.1016/S1350-4487(99)00170-5 might have it, which I found searching some old papers on your helpful tip on the Allchar mine. (My access has been misbehaving today, so I haven't read past the abstract yet.) Double sharp (talk) 14:01, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

What I can find in this paper (and in one of its most "interesting" references, by Freedman) does not seem to me to report any actual finding of lead-205, only speculating about that it "should be" found in the lorandite at Allchar. Maybe lead-205 has been found in lorandite, at Allchar or in some other place, but I have not been able to find this published. However, I find it very probable that lead-205 should really be a cosmogenic nuclide, but I would like to read firm evidence. /Erik Ljungstrand (Sweden). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.241.158.201 (talk) 17:05, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

I've taken it out for now (and added Pu-244 as a cosmogenic); I agree that it very likely is there, but also that we need a source. Thank you for all your sharp-eyed corrections so far! Double sharp (talk) 23:20, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure atoms that arrive on Earth via space dust are not considered cosmogenic (unless produced by cosmic ray action on the space dust). "Cosmogenic" refers AFAIK specifically to cosmic rays rather than simply "from the cosmos". Moreover, it refers to the means by which nuclides were produced, not how they ended up on Earth. ²⁴⁴Pu is created by the r-process, not by cosmic ray action. Magic9mushroom (talk) 12:02, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

@Magic9mushroom: You're right; we should call these interstellar nuclides instead, e.g. these two papers on interstellar ⁶⁰Fe. Double sharp (talk) 15:22, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

I have changed ²⁴⁴Pu to "interstellar" and ⁶⁰Fe to "CG, interstellar". Hopefully others will come soon (²⁶Al?). Double sharp (talk) 15:27, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Naturally occuring copernicium-285?

Thank you for the nice words. I am working (since a number of years ago, on my spare time) on a list of all naturally occuring nuclides on Earth, therefore I have had the opportunity to find some small errors in this Wikipedia list. And, under "Naturally occurring isotopes with half-lives below one hour", there is one nuclide, copernicium-285 with a half-life of 29 s, which I do not think has been confirmed as occuring in nature; if fact, I seriously doubt that it does at all. Also, at http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/metsoc2007/pdf/5281.pdf you can find a reference for adding "CG" under iron-60, which like plutonium-244 is a cosmogenic nuclide "by meteorites" on Earth. /Erik Ljungstrand (Sweden). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.241.158.201 (talk) 05:15, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

I have no idea how Cn-285 got here at all, and have deleted it. Thank you for the reference for Fe-60; I shall add it. Double sharp (talk) 06:14, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

 Done Thank you once again! Double sharp (talk) 06:17, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

P.S. I wonder if this is a misunderstanding of some speculations that some Cn isotopes in the island of stability with thousand-year half-lives might have come down to Earth in cosmic rays (see copernicium). Given the low boiling point of Cn, the best place to look for this might well be the ice sheets and permafrost in the polar regions. But evidently it is not the Cn-285 isotope that would be found, since it does not even live for a minute before expelling an alpha particle. Double sharp (talk) 10:31, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I propose that List of radioactive isotopes by half-life be merged into this article. It duplicates the scope of this list, but some nuclides there (e.g. ⁷H) are not on this list. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 17:45, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

I agree. -The 2nd Red Guy (talk) 15:51, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Oppose merge on the grounds of WP:SIZE. The List of nuclides is already 150k and so a merge is the inappropriate. The two pages are clearly linked. Klbrain (talk) 21:48, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Oppose a simple merge is not advisable indeed. Size is an issue because of Readers Overview. Not just merge because "both are listing isotopes, so ..." (not a 'duplicate scope' btw). However, maybe the lists themselves can be merged. As noted below in #Overview, worstr case would yield 1200+900=2100 entries. Being sortable (filtering) seems most useful feature. This required list structure rethinking. (also, automation deerly needed). BTW with 2100 isotopes listed, thats over 60% missing. -DePiep (talk) 13:00, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Overview

There is:

• List of nuclides ("that either stable or half-lives longer than one hour", now ca. 991 isotopes), and
• List of radioactive nuclides by half-life ("...", now ca. 1208 isotopes).
• Table of nuclides (N, Z) graph, List of elements by stability of isotopes, ..

{{NUBASE2020}} states:

3340 ground state

1938 excited isomeric

 218 unobserved, estimated; ground state

  45 unobserved, estimated; excited state

————— +

5541 isotopes are listed

of which ca. 260 are stable.

-DePiep (talk) 13:00, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

No rutherfordium isotopes in the list

"... half-lives longer than one hour. This represents isotopes of the first 105 elements, except for elements 87 (francium) and 102 (nobelium)": should exclude also 104 (rutherfordium), since the known isotope with the longest half-life is ²⁶⁷Rf with a half-life of about 48 minutes? 129.104.241.246 (talk) 23:17, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

²⁶⁷Rf is in the list (number 897), due to an older measurement that put its half-life over an hour. Probably the nuclides far down the list have not been updated regularly. Double sharp (talk) 07:52, 23 November 2023 (UTC)