🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <38C15B47.3D1C02AB@hotpop.com>,
Jeppe Stig Nielsen  <jeppesn@hotpop.com> wrote:
>Heavy nuclei are usually surrounded by a large number of orbital electrons.
>Some unstable, proton-rich nuclei primarily decay by capturing an orbital
>electron from the 1st shell (the K shell), like
>
>   p + e  ->  n + neutrino
>
>My question is this: If you strip away *all* electrons from such a nucleus,
>making K-capture impossible, how much may the life-time of the nucleus be
>increased (in percents)?
>
>Are there table values for the life-times of these "isolated" nuclei? The
>usual tables are valid for nuclei in electrically neutral atoms only.
>

Hey, that's interesting.  Never thought of that before.  It would probably
be hard to measure.

If you can find a table of the relative probabilities for each of the
common decay modes, you could probably just eliminate the orbital electron
capture mode and calculate the new half life.  I wouldn't expect the other
decay modes to much care whether there's orbital electrons or not.

Have fun,

Bryan

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