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To: gcruse
these hazardous, radioactive times

Supernovas create heavy atoms such as iron. Since it was freshly created material, any radioactive isotopes would still be hot compared to now, 2 million years later.

I guess. It's probably a little hyperbole. Iron-60, if it were highly radioactive, would have decayed to something else by now. Actually iron is about as stable an element as there is. The end result of the universe reaction when it goes to completion will be iron. Everything will be iron.

49 posted on 02/18/2002 9:30:15 PM PST by RightWhale
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To: RightWhale
Re: #49:

I suspect the time required for this to occur is quite long. The other "stable" isotopes (excluding iron) seem to exist in an extremely long lived metastable state. Maybe longer than the proton decay time?

L.P.
56 posted on 02/19/2002 6:34:34 AM PST by Lagrange Point
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