Consider two nuclei of the same radioactive nuclide. One of the nuclei was created in a supernova explosion 5 billion years ago. The other was created in a nuclear reactor 5 minutes ago. The probability of decay during the next time is

Options

A. different for each nuclei
B. nuclei created in explosion decays first
C. nuclei created in the reactor decays first
D. independent of the time of creation

Answer

d

Explanation

Radioactive decay is a statistical process which depends upon the instability of the particular radioisotope. But as far as two nuclei are concerned, one cannot predict anything. Statistical probability is applied to a large number of nuclei. One cannot apply this to be an individual nucleus