beta decay is the type of reaction that causes the decay of carbon-14.
beta decay is the type of reaction that causes the decay of carbon-14.
what type of reaction is the decay of carbon-14?
beta decay
the different isotopes of carbon do not differ appreciably in their chemical properties. this resemblance is used in chemical and biological research, in a technique called carbon labeling: carbon-14 atoms can be used to replace nonradioactive carbon, in order to trace chemical and biochemical reactions involving carbon atoms from any given organic compound.









































section::::radioactive decay and detection.









































carbon-14 goes through radioactive beta decay:









































by emitting an electron and an electron antineutrino, one of the neutrons in the carbon-14 atom decays to a proton and the carbon-14 (half-life of 5,700 ± 40 years) decays into the stable (non-radioactive) isotope nitrogen-14.
carbon-14
in 1998 clayton voiced a new idea for supernova chemistry by arguing that radioactive decay causes carbon to condense within oxygen-rich supernova gas. he reached that conclusion after weihong liu and alexander dalgarno showed that radioactive decays of co create fast compton-scattered electrons that would dissociate the co molecule [e+co  e'+c+o], thereby preventing the complete oxidation of carbon atoms within young remnants of core-collapse supernovae. clayton initiated an energetic crusade in 1998 demonstrating that the vast reservoir of carbon in core-collapse supernovae must condense as carbon dust despite being bathed in more-abundant oxygen gas. this idea met skepticism from meteoriiticists and cosmochemists because it contradicted a commonly accepted rule of thumb that held that the abundance of carbon must exceed that of oxygen (written co) in order for carbon to condense. clayton advocated that supernova carbon stardust (which in 1977 he had named "sunocons", an acronym for supernova condensates) could therefore assemble within hot supernova c+o gases containing more oxygen than carbon and nothing else. rather than a specialist's chemical detail, this is a profound conclusion for astrophysics because it partly explains the large amounts of dust created by supernovae in the early universe. meteoritic chemists to whom his 1998-99 lunar and planetary science conference papers were addressed doubted that possibility on intuitive but erroneous chemical grounds, believing that abundant hot oxygen gas would oxidize all carbon atoms leaving them trapped within chemically inert co molecules—an expectation that holds true in ordinary stars. clayton asserted that this incorrect chemical rule-of-thumb was erroneously biasing interpretive studies of carbon sunocons (primarily sic grains and graphite grains). with lih-sin the at clemson he computed the large density of energetic electrons produced by scattering of gamma rays emitted by radioactive cobalt. those continuously replenish the abundance of free carbon atoms in the supernova gas by breaking apart the abundant co molecules. in the most recent of his papers, clayton & meyer (2017) computed every reaction step from hot gas to cold grains during the cooling expansion of the supernova gas. those quite abundant free carbon atoms enable carbon-chain molecules to maintain their small abundances against constant oxidation and later capture carbon atoms until they become macroscopic grains of carbon. he summarized his new picture in a 2011 review paper advancing new rules for carbon condensation in oxygen-rich supernovae gases. the kinetic-chemical-reaction model underlying all of these works was initially devised with weihong liu and alexander dalgarno and later expanded by
donald d. clayton