RE: Miracles and Anti-supernaturalism
August 5, 2013 at 2:59 pm
(This post was last modified: August 5, 2013 at 3:01 pm by Mister Agenda.)
(August 4, 2013 at 4:02 pm)Rahul Wrote:(August 4, 2013 at 11:09 am)Chas Wrote: Untrue. In radioactive decay, there is no known cause for a particular atom to decay. All of our measurements are statistical. Listen to a Geiger counter.
Instability causes the atom to decay.
Instability is why the atom decays, it isn't the cause of the atom's decay. If your house is unstable, the storm or whatever that brings it down is still the cause of its collapse.
(August 4, 2013 at 4:02 pm)Rahul Wrote: We know why they decay. You could throw a theoretical atom at a physicist and he could predict how fast it would decay based on it's properties.
We know that they decay, we don't really know why. If you threw a chunk of radium-226 at a physicist he could tell tyou that half of its atoms will have decayed in 1,601 years, but if you gave him a radium atom he couldn't predict whether it will decay tomorrow or in 10,000 years.
(August 4, 2013 at 4:02 pm)Rahul Wrote: Isn't it Lead that is the highest element that is completely stable?
Lead is the element with the heaviest stable isotope (lead 208). It hasn't been observed to decay, as yet, but more sensitive instruments may allow us to determine a decay rate in future, one that us probably a number of years with 20 to 25 zeroes before the decimal point.
