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Particle Decays and Annihilations

Particle decay refers to the transformation of a fundamental particle into other fundamental particles.

In the late 1800s the German physicist, Wilhelm Röntgen, discovered a strange new ray produced when an electron beam struck a piece of metal. Since these were rays of an unknown nature, he called them "x rays". Later on, Becquerel realized that some materials, which included uranium, emitted energetic rays without any energy input. He found out that some elements are inherently unstable, because these elements would spontaneously release different forms of energy. This release of energetic particles due to the decay of the unstable nuclei of atoms is called radioactivity. The three types of radioactivity are named alpha (+), beta (-), and gamma (neutral).

There is a tiny, tiny chance that a conglomeration of two protons and two neutrons (which form an alpha particle) may, at the same instant, actually migrate outside the nucleus. The idea that "if it can happen, it will happen!" is fundamental to quantum mechanics. For some atoms there is a certain probability that it will undergo radioactive decay due to the possibility that the nucleus may --for the shortest of instants-- exist in a state that allows it to blow apart.

When nuclei undergo radioactive decay, some of their mass is converted into kinetic energy (the energy of the moving particles). This conversion of energy is observed as a loss of mass.

It turns out that when a fundamental particle decays, it changes into a less massive particle and a force-carrier particle. In many cases, these temporary force-carrier particles seem to violate the conservation of energy. However, these particles exist so briefly that, because of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, no rules are broken. These are called virtual particles.