# How long does an individual atom survive?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 12, 2013, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514 "2013-04-12T16:19:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2013, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/21 "2013-04-14T20:26:50Z")
> [@njtt](#):
>
> This may just be a case of Wikipedia giving an inaccurate account of the argument, but I see no particular reason to think it is.
Okay, I threw you a softball with Wiki cite. How about the other one, [the one written by an actual physicist](http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0511002)? Do you think it is erroneous, or misguided?
I seem to recall that you, yourself, are a physicist (or very well versed in the subject). So, I am beginning to wonder if your objection to the notion of indistinguishability is philosophical or, um . . . how shall I put this, . . . scientific. Do you object to the concept? or do you, perhaps, know of some empirical proof that it _isn’t_ that way, or physical reasons why it _can’t_ be that way?
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### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2022, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/22 "2022-02-25T17:54:32Z")
Hello Friends,
I have resuscitated this thread because ‘I discovered, while reminiscing after years of absence from this estimable board, the following long thread which also deals with precisely this topic, from just a few years earlier, and its ins and outs complement what’s here wonderfully:
> [@What is the ultimate fates, and in what order, for the atoms of my body?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-ultimate-fates-and-in-what-order-for-the-atoms-of-my-body/600010):
>
> I was pondering mortality the other day. Someone had asked me the usual “maybe there is a heaven; so how do you know where you’ll go when you die?” I told her I’d turn into a different arrangement of atoms, and that would be that. So I got to thinking, what would happen to my constituent atoms–in rough order of events per atom–over very long time scales until the Big Crunch, or whatever? Once I know the Dope, maybe I’ll ponder better.
I’m happy to be here again.
Leo
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### Author:  [@pjd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pjd)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2022, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/23 "2022-02-25T18:03:51Z")
Welcome back !
The exits are here, here and here.
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### Author:  [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2022, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/24 "2022-02-25T22:13:47Z")
Also here?
Welcome back Leo.
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2022, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/25 "2022-02-25T23:29:16Z")
Also welcome.
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### Author:  [@CardboardBoxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CardboardBoxx)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2022, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/26 "2022-02-27T01:19:47Z")
This post was perfectly understandable. Sock detected. (kidding)
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### Author:  [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2022, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/27 "2022-02-27T12:38:30Z")
Welcome back !
But how can we be sure if you’re the same @Leo_Bloom ? Have you used a teleporter in the past 2 years ? Or undergone surgery on the private yacht of Dr. Theseus ?
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### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2022, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/28 "2022-03-05T17:46:56Z")
In some thread or other–this thread?–@Chronos weighs in with his considerable non-resting mass on when-push-does-_not_-come-to-shove every electron is the same electron as far as anyone in the Universe cares.
(Please dont hate me, as usual, Chronos, if I got that really, really, wrong.)
PS I added that “@” sign in front of his name because I see that’s what all the cool kids do now here. No idea what it means. Which come to think of it isn’t that different from many of my other strings of graphemes here I have posted over the years.)
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### Author:  [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2022, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/29 "2022-03-05T17:56:43Z")
The @ sign in front of a users name gives them a notice that they were mentioned in a thread that they may not be following. @Leo_Bloom.
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### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2022, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/30 "2022-03-05T18:01:45Z")
Si, thnx on the RTFM…
Just wanted to add that it is possible that based on the teeny-tiny colloquy in posts 26 & 27 on Heracles/Theseus and Bloom/Chronos, that I am a perdurantist, or at least perdurant-curious.
I wonder if Chronos was/is an evangelist of that sneaky bunch.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2022, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/31 "2022-03-05T18:27:40Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#):
>
> In some thread or other–this thread?–@Chronos weighs in with his considerable non-resting mass on when-push-does- _not_ -come-to-shove every electron is the same electron as far as anyone in the Universe cares.
I’m having a hard time unraveling that question, but it has been seriously posited that every electron is (in some sense) the “same electron”, and there’s not really any way to refute it.
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### Author:  [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2022, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/32 "2022-03-05T19:11:41Z")
Refute it? AFAIK that is what they teach kids about quantum mechanics: suppose you have two electrons; this system can be described by a wavefunction \psi(x,y). But then \psi(y,x)=-\psi(x,y). So the electrons are the “same”, and also fermionic.
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### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2022, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/33 "2022-03-05T19:14:57Z")
My only question was if you were a perdurant or not.
The rest was merely repeating some SD of yours, and what may be a philosopical label identifying like-minded people. Pinning philosophical labels on myself and others is an old pass-time of mine.
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### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2022, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/34 "2022-03-05T19:20:10Z")
All of which, I must say again, stems from Theseonics.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2022, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/35 "2022-03-05T19:31:01Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#):
>
> My only question was if you were a perdurant or not.
Googling that word, it appears to mean something that exists for an extended but finite time? If that’s what it means, then surely every person is a perdurant? But I have no idea what that has to do with the question about electrons.
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### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2022, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/36 "2022-03-05T20:06:05Z")
My sense of this whole game/dialectic is that the philosophical gambit of the ship of Theseus gets something like a glug of fuel in its afterburner with the notion of the “identity” over time of “an” (individual) electron.
And my vanity compels me to repeat a funny I came up with some other time that ship was kicked around here, that at the time (early 21st century) I considered the Allman Brothers Band a contemporary instance.
The total extent of my deeply committed immersion in perdurance comes from this wiki entry which I came across this morning.
> **[Perdurantism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perdurantism)**
>
> Perdurantism or perdurance theory is a philosophical theory of persistence and identity. The debate over persistence currently involves three competing theories—one three-dimensionalist theory called "endurantism" and two four-dimensionalist theories called
> "perdurantism" and "exdurantism". For a perdurantist, all objects are considered to be four-dimensional worms and they make up the different regions of spacetime. It is a fusion of all the perdurant's instantaneous time slices
> compiled and Ta...
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### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2022, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/37 "2022-03-05T20:19:27Z")
And as you and a zillion other people know, the novel contributions of quantum physics to the conundra of epistemology have been recognized for a century at least, and that perdure/endure rap is just one more.
And hell, when you throw in the ontological status of … stuff … whew!
So I’m just messing around…
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### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2022, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/38 "2022-03-05T20:26:33Z")
One more thing: “Shut up and calculate” as a response to such wool-gathering.
I remember that often as a wise saying once posted here.
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### Author:  [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2022, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/39 "2022-03-06T14:35:21Z")
Why does it matter whether we can identify a nucleus as the same nucleus we identified earlier?
If there are ways of knowing that a nucleus cannot escape some kind of confinement, we don’t have to be able to identify it repeatedly to know that its identity has not changed.
If you seal any object in a box that only you control, you know it’s the same object later.
So – can we know that a nucleus is unable to leave a situation? If it’s captive in some crystal structure for example?
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2022, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/40 "2022-03-06T17:53:24Z")
We don’t know that it’s unable to leave. It might, for instance, spontaneously swap places with another nucleus of the same element and isotope somewhere in another galaxy, and we’d never know the difference.
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