Alpha decay is a type of radioactive decay in which an atomic nucleus emits an alpha particle ( two protons and two neutrons ) and thereby transforms ( or ' decays ') into an atom with a mass number 4 less and atomic number 2 less.

Alpha decay is by far the most common form of cluster decay where the parent atom ejects a defined daughter collection of nucleons, leaving another defined product behind ( in nuclear fission, a number of different pairs of daughters of approximately equal size are formed ).

Alpha decay, like other cluster decays, is fundamentally a quantum tunneling process.

Alpha decay typically occurs in the heaviest nuclides.

Alpha decay can provide a safe power source for radioisotope thermoelectric generators used for space probes and artificial heart pacemakers.

Alpha decay is much more easily shielded against than other forms of radioactive decay.

# REDIRECT Alpha decay

Alpha decay is when a nucleus releases an alpha particle, which is two protons and two neutrons, equivalent to a helium nucleus.

Alpha decay is one example type of radioactivity | radioactive decay, in which an atomic nucleus emits an alpha particle, and thereby transforms ( or ' decays ') into an atom with a mass number 4 less and atomic number 2 less.

Alpha decay occurs when the nucleus ejects an alpha particle ( helium nucleus ).

Alpha particles, protons, and X-rays are emitted during the radioactive decay of unstable atoms.

Alpha particles, produced by the decay of radon and polonium, leave tracks of charge on the silicon wafers when they impact the silicon.

* One recent hypothesis suggests that the lights are formed by a cluster of macroscopic Coulomb crystals in a plasma produced by the ionization of air and dust by Alpha particles during radon decay in the dusty atmosphere.

Alpha decay of heavy elements in the Earth's crust is the source of most naturally occurring helium-4 on Earth.

# REDIRECT Alpha decay

Note that the mass threshold is four times that of 1958 Alpha and that the flux is one fifth as large.

Therefore, N is inversely proportional to the radius cubed and in fair agreement with the inverse 7/2 power derived from 1958 Alpha and 1959 Eta data.

Her husband, who is the son of Alton John Mason of Shreveport, La., and the late Mrs. Henry Cater Parmer, was president of Alpha Tau Omega and a member of Delta Sigma Pi at Lamar Tech, and did graduate work at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, on a Rotary Fellowship.

It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.

Alpha ( uppercase Α, lowercase α ; Álpha ) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet.

Alpha, both as a symbol and term, is used to refer to or describe a variety of things, including the first or most significant occurrence of something.

Alpha particles have a typical kinetic energy of 5 MeV ( that is, ≈ 0. 13 % of their total energy, i. e. 110 TJ / kg ) and a speed of 15, 000 km / s.

Alpha blending is a convex combination of two colors allowing for transparency effects in computer graphics.

Alpha blending is used in a variety of applications.

Arcturus (; α Boo, α Boötis, Alpha Boötis ) is the brightest star in the constellation Boötes and in fact the northern celestial hemisphere.

With a visual magnitude of − 0. 04, it is the fourth brightest star in the night sky, after − 1. 46 magnitude Sirius, − 0. 86 magnitude Canopus, and − 0. 27 magnitude Alpha Centauri.

However, Alpha Centauri is a bright binary star, whose unresolved components to the naked eye are both fainter than Arcturus.

This makes Arcturus the third brightest individual star, just ahead of Alpha Centauri A ( α Cen A ), whose visual magnitude is − 0. 01.

Antares ( α Scorpii, α Sco, Alpha Scorpii ) is a red supergiant star in the Milky Way galaxy and the sixteenth brightest star in the nighttime sky.

Altair ( Alpha Aquilae, Alpha Aql, α Aquilae, α Aql, Atair ) is the brightest star in the constellation Aquila and the twelfth brightest star in the night sky.

: Alpha testing takes place at developers ' sites, and involves testing of the operational system by internal staff, before it is released to external customers.

) For example, Aldebaran is designated α Tauri ( pronounced Alpha Tauri ), which means " Alpha of the Bull ".

Statistically, the most significant data have been collected from the sensors on 1958 Alpha ( Explorer 1 ), 1958 Delta 2 ( Sputnik 3 ), and 1959 Eta ( Vanguard 3 ).

Although the Alpha processor family met both of these goals, and, for most of its lifetime, was the fastest processor family on the market, it did little to affect the bottom line or repair the company's status.

The Alpha architecture was sold, along with most parts of DEC, to Compaq in 1998.

The first few generations of the Alpha chips were some of the most innovative of their time.

The Tarantula research project, which most likely would have been called EV9, would have been the first Alpha processor to feature a vector unit.

He was a brother in Alpha Chi Sigma, the professional chemistry fraternity, and for most of his long professorial career, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley.

* 2005 – Tropical Storm Alpha forms in the Atlantic Basin, making the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record with 22 named storms.

The P5 Pentium competitors included the Motorola 68060 and the PowerPC 601 as well as the SPARC, MIPS, and Alpha microprocessor families, most of which also used a superscalar in-order dual instruction pipeline configuration at some time.

The most common unifying element to games in this video game genre is a jump button ; other jump mechanics include swinging from extendable arms, as in Ristar or Bionic Commando, or bouncing from springboards or trampolines, as in Alpha Waves.

The city is recognized as a major world fashion and design capital, and it has thus been ranked by GaWC as an Alpha world city in 2010, as well as the 42nd most important global city.

DEC ported OSF / 1 to their new Alpha AXP platform ( as DEC OSF / 1 AXP ), and this was the first version ( Release 1. 2 ) of what is most commonly referred to as OSF / 1.

Alpha Centauri being a founding world of the Federation and even having a humanlike native race called Centaurans became a popular fan theory, possibly based on uncertainty as to whether or not Zefram Cochrane ( described in Metamorphosis as " Zefram Cochrane of Alpha Centauri ") was a native of Alpha Centauri or a resident of a human colony in that system ; the latter has since been revealed to be the case, Cochrane having spent most of his life on Earth but eventually retiring to spend his final years on Alpha Centauri, prior to his disappearance and presumed death.

* Alpha blockers ( technically α < sub > 1 </ sub >- adrenergic receptor antagonists ) are the most common choice for initial therapy in the USA and Europe.

The two most popular programs used in this process were JACOsub ( on the Commodore Amiga ) and Substation Alpha ( on MS Windows ).

While similar technologies existed ( Wabi for Solaris and Linux, FX! 32 for Alpha and IA-32 EL for Itanium, open-source DAISY, the Mac 68K emulator for the PowerPC ) in the 1990s, the Transmeta approach has set a much higher bar for compatibility — able to execute all x86 instructions from initial boot up to the latest multimedia instructions — while retaining most of its core performance.

It also was used in operations in other countries, the most known being the Operation Storm-333, during which detachments from Alpha and Zenith supported the " Muslim battalion " of the Spetsnaz GRU on a mission to overthrow and kill the Afghan President Hafizullah Amin.

Alpha process elements ( or alpha elements ) are so-called since their most abundant isotopes are integer multiples of the mass of the helium nucleus ( the alpha particle ).

In the Mirror Universe, Earth is the capital of the despotic Terran Empire which rules over large portions of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants and is generally seen as the most powerful interstellar empire.

In most 32-bit per pixel formats ( 32bpp ), the intensity of each channel sample is defined by 8 bits, and the samples are arranged in memory in such manner that a single 32-bit unsigned integer has the Alpha sample in the highest 8 bits, followed by the Red sample, Green sample and the Blue sample in the lowest 8 bits.