What causes the radioactive decay of an unstable nucleus?

[sayetsu]

Homework Statement

A philosopher uses the example of a radium atom's decay as an example of an "uncaused" power, but my prof says such events are actually caused by "quantum fluctuations."

Relevant Equations

n/a

A philosopher whose work I'm using in a paper uses a radium atom's decay as an example of a "spontaneous power," or an uncaused event. My professor, though, says "quantum fluctuations" cause radioactive decay. What are these fluctuations, and do we know what causes them? It's a college paper, so I could use some citable resources which I could understand as a student of philosophy, not physics, please.

 

[PeroK]

Nuclear decay is an example of the weak force or weak interaction:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_interaction

Note that quantum mechanical interactions obey energy conservation, so there is no spontaneous power generated, where power is energy per unit time. The total energy of the system is conserved.

 

[vela]

Nuclear decay is an example of the weak force or weak interaction.

If it's some sort of beta decay. Radium initially decays by emitting an alpha particle, which is due to tunneling.

https://www.nist.gov/image-23773

 

[gmax137]

The decay is random, though, in the sense that we cannot predict when a given atom will decay. All we can do (AFAIK) is determine an accurate half-life for a large collection of the unstable atoms.

Conflating "uncaused" with "random" seems to be an error, but I hesitate to say that for sure, without knowing what the philosopher's definition is for "uncaused."

 

[PhDeezNutz]

So we have two philosophers (your professor and this other person) going back and forth about a physics topic?

I hope OP settles this quandary and gets a good grade on his/her paper but I don’t see this thread lasting long.