Page "Chemical element" Paragraph 58

On Earth ( and elsewhere ), trace amounts of various elements continue to be produced from other elements as products of natural transmutation processes.

These include some produced by cosmic rays or other nuclear reactions ( see cosmogenic and nucleogenic nuclides ), and others produced as decay products of long-lived primordial nuclides.

For example, trace ( but detectable ) amounts of carbon-14 (< sup > 14 </ sup > C ) are continually produced in the atmosphere by cosmic rays impacting nitrogen atoms, and argon-40 (< sup > 40 </ sup > Ar ) is continually produced by the decay of primordially occurring but unstable potassium-40 (< sup > 40 </ sup > K ).

Also, three primordially occurring but radioactive actinides, thorium, uranium, and plutonium, decay through a series of recurrently produced but unstable radioactive elements such as radium and radon, which are transiently present in any sample of these metals or their ores or compounds.

Seven other radioactive elements, technetium, promethium, neptunium, americium, curium, berkelium, and californium, occur only incidentally in natural materials, produced as individual atoms by natural fission of the nuclei of various heavy elements or in other rare nuclear processses.