# 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:** 3
**Page:** 3

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### Author: ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2022, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/41 "2022-03-06T20:24:06Z")

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> [@Chronos](#):
>
> 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.

By this standard, it is impossible to know that any thing survives for any time. The OP becomes an unanswerable question for atoms and for all other things.

You can’t trust atoms, anyhow. They make up everything.

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### Author: ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2022, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/42 "2022-03-06T20:41:59Z")

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Yup, that’s the whole point of indistinguishability.

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### Author: ![Pasta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pasta)
#### Post date: [March 7, 2022, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-an-individual-atom-survive/655514/43 "2022-03-07T20:52:56Z")

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The “same electron” or “same nucleus” ontological stuff is rather beside the point. Indistinguishability ties to the quantum statistical behavior of particles, but that doesn’t mean you can’t talk about _that_ electron. It is perfectly reasonable to say that you have an electron _here_ and another one over _there_, and through observation know that they could not have reasonably swapped placed through transport. And that is unrelated to their statistical indistinguishability.

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