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The KDK collaboration identifies rare nuclear decay in long-lived potassium isotope - EurekAlert


Potassium-40 usually decays to calcium-40, but about 10 percent of the time it decays to argon-40 through electron capture. One variant of this decay path ends in argon-40 in its ground state. The rate of this decay is important for using argon-40 to determine the age of geologic features and studying neutrinoless double beta decay. Researchers recently made the first direct observations of this very rare but critical decay path.

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rare nuclear decay

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KDK

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