Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by RandomLensman 14 days ago
My point was that we cannot predict which atom decays next.

If you want to claim that we could predict which specific atom decays next, I'd really like to see a lot more explaintion and exposition as it would upend current understanding.

1 comments

The trick is that you can't predict something that doesn't happen even if you feel otherwise.
Atoms don't decay? Radioactive decay isn't a thing?

But at least we agree there is nothing we can predict.

We can predict decay process as

sqrt(1-exp(-t/T))|1> + sqrt(exp(-t/T))|0>

If I were to give you ten atoms of Po210, could you tell me which one will be next to turn into Pb206. What's your algorithm to do that?
My algorithm is at least to not predict it as not what it is. All ten atoms decay according to the formula above.