Incoming links: Uranium 238 decay chain
Becquerel's rays Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16
These must have been gamma rays.
Just before he left Cambridge for Montreal in 1898, Rutherford conducted a simple, systematic experiment to study the absorption of rays from uranium. [...] In 1901 he determined that Becquerel's rays are indeed electromagnetic rays. He called them γ (gamma) rays.
This terminology is used e.g. in Marie Curie's Polonium paper:
Some minerals containing uranium and thorium (pitchblende, chalcolite, uranite) are very active from the point of view of the emission of Becquerel rays.
Gamma spectroscopy of a Uranium ore
. Source. Several points of the Uranium 238 decay chain are clearly visible.
Gamma spectroscopy Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16
Gamma spectroscopy of a Uranium ore
. Source. Several points of the Uranium 238 decay chain are clearly visible. Polonium-210 Updated 2025-07-16
The only isotope found on Earth because it occurs as part of the uranium 238 decay chain, i.e., it is not a primordial nuclide.
Radium Updated 2025-07-16
Discovered by Marie Curie when she noticed that there was some yet unknown more radioactive element in their raw samples, after uranium and polonium, which she published 6 months prior, had already been separated. Published on December 1989 as: Section "Sur une nouvelle substance fortement radio-active, contenue dans la pechblende".
The uranium 238 decay chain is the main source of naturally occurring radium.