Iodine and Xenon lie at the base of a valley of stability in which this process does not occur.
Iodine and Xenon lie at the base of a valley of stability in which this process does not occur. Neutron stars would degenerate in 10 minutes through this process if all electron states weren't filled in the core. This phenomenon was used to derive Fermi's Golden Rule. The NEMO-3 experiment searches for a variant of it that can only occur if the neutrino is its own antiparticle. This process uses an intermediate W boson to transform a (*) down quark into an up quark or vice versa. This phenomenon, which is responsible for changing carbon-14 to nitrogen-14 with a half-life of 5700 years, changes the atomic number by one but leaves the atomic mass constant. For 10 points, name this phenomenon in which a nucleus emits either a positron or an electron.
Iodine and Xenon lie at the base of a valley of stability in which this process does not occur.
beta decay [accept beta-plus decay or beta-minus decay; prompt on "decay", "radioactive decay", or "nuclear decay"]