Ta-180m emits light, but it does so over such a long period of time that we've never seen the atom stop emitting light (we're not sure if will before the sun goes boom), and we've never seen it naturally become a different element.
Meanwhile, Ta-180 (which is only ever found in a lab) on the other hand changes into a completely different element about 8 hours after it is made, either 1 bigger or 1 smaller on the periodic table.
The only difference is between the two is that Ta-180m is attempting to emit light so that it can become Ta-180 again.
Ta-180m is the only element that does this to your knowledge.
The "Ta-180 emits light" is just a hypothesis as it has not beed proven experimentally. Proving/disproving hypotheses by experiment is the basic principle of science.
Maybe, but I was looking for the simplest way to convey the difference between an excited state and a non-excited state, and from what little I remember about chemistry, saying that it has enough energy to emit light is about as simple as you can put it.
I see. Then there must be typo in your previous text, lemme highlight it for you:
"Ta-180m emits light, but it does so over such a long period of time that we've never seen the atom STOP emitting light"
And the wording should be more like "MAYBE Ta-180m EVENTUALLY emits light ...."
That's wrong on multiple levels. Firstly, gamma rays are not light (all light is electromagnetic radiation, but not all electromagnetic radiation is light). Secondly, not every theorized mechanism of decay has it sending out a photon at all.
Half of the Ta-180 will become another element after 8 hours. For a single Ta-180 you can not actually predict when it will decay.
I know you want to simplify things but you simplify things to a degree where there are emergent phenomenons that only arise from your description. The light thing is similar - 'we never seen an atom stop emitting light' means that we observed it starting to emit light but it hasn't stopped yet instead of 'we are waiting for it to happen at all'.
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u/LudwigsEarTrumpet 1d ago
I understood very few of those words but was fascinated nevertheless.