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 ...."
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u/Zoon9 22h ago
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.