radioactivity

42:3.119. Ra­dioac­tive mat­ter—the dis­or­ga­niz­ing ten­dency and ac­tiv­ity of the heav­ier el­e­ments un­der con­di­tions of mod­er­ate heat and di­min­ished grav­ity pres­sure.

42:8.5The pres­ence and func­tion of the meso­tron also ex­plains an­other atomic rid­dle. When atoms per­form ra­dioac­tively, they emit far more en­ergy than would be ex­pected. This ex­cess of ra­di­a­tion is de­rived from the break­ing up of the meso­tron “en­ergy car­rier,” which thereby be­comes a mere elec­tron. The mesotronic dis­in­te­gra­tion is also ac­com­pa­nied by the emis­sion of cer­tain small un­charged par­ti­cles.

57:7.3Def­i­nite vol­canic ac­tion dates from these times. The in­ter­nal heat of the earth con­tin­ued to be aug­mented by the deeper and deeper burial of the ra­dioac­tive or heav­ier el­e­ments brought in from space by the me­te­ors. The study of these ra­dioac­tive el­e­ments will re­veal that Uran­tia is more than one bil­lion years old on its sur­face. The ra­dium clock is your most re­li­able time­piece for mak­ing sci­en­tific es­ti­mates of the age of the planet, but all such es­ti­mates are too short be­cause the ra­dioac­tive ma­te­ri­als open to your scrutiny are all de­rived from the earth’s sur­face and hence rep­re­sent Uran­tia’s com­par­a­tively re­cent ac­quire­ments of these el­e­ments.

42:4.12The ex­is­tence of pre-elec­tronic forms of mat­ter is in­di­cated by the two atomic weights of lead. The lead of orig­i­nal for­ma­tion weighs slightly more than that pro­duced through ura­nium dis­in­te­gra­tion by way of ra­dium em­a­na­tions; and this dif­fer­ence in atomic weight rep­re­sents the ac­tual loss of en­ergy in the atomic breakup.