Hi QuantumPion, If you say heavy nucleus can decay by carbon emission, is that fact predicted, or is just a discovery after it has occurred. Given a mixture of fissile, fertile and other non-fissile non fertile naturally radioactive atoms, can we predict all possible modes of radioactivity?
Most texts on radioactivity starts by saying "there are three important modes of radioactivity-alpha, beta and gamma..." and goes on to describe their properties. But why are there only a few modes of radioactivity? Does that mean the modes observed so far, or, are there theories to describe the...