Isotopes of barium

Isotopes of barium (56Ba)
Main isotopes[1] Decay
abun­dance half-life (t1/2) mode pro­duct
130Ba 0.11% (0.5–2.7)×1021 y εε 130Xe
131Ba synth 11.52 d β+ 131Cs
132Ba 0.1% stable
133Ba synth 10.538 y ε 133Cs
134Ba 2.42% stable
135Ba 6.59% stable
136Ba 7.85% stable
137Ba 11.2% stable
138Ba 71.7% stable
140Ba synth 12.753 d β 140La
Standard atomic weight Ar°(Ba)

Naturally occurring barium (56Ba) is a mix of six stable isotopes and one very long-lived radioactive primordial isotope, barium-130, identified as being unstable by geochemical means (from analysis of the presence of its daughter xenon-130 in rocks) in 2001,[4][5] presumably decaying by double electron capture with a half-life of (0.5–2.7)×1021 years (about 1011 times the age of the universe). The two measurements are discordant; the above reflects the total range, the value in the table below is a crude average.

With the total range of mass numbers known 114 to 154, there are thirty-three known radioisotopes in addition to 130Ba. The longest-lived of these is 133Ba, which has a half-life of 10.538 years; all others have half-lives shorter than two weeks. The longest-lived isomers are 133mBa at 38.90 hours and 135m1Ba at 28.11 hours. The analogous 137m1Ba (half-life 2.552 minutes) occurs in the decay of the common fission product caesium-137.

Barium-114 is theorized to undergo cluster decay, emitting a nucleus of stable 12C to produce 102Sn. This decay has not been observed, with only an upper limit on the branching ratio of such decay (0.0034%).

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  2. ^ "Standard Atomic Weights: Barium". CIAAW. 1985.
  3. ^ Prohaska, Thomas; Irrgeher, Johanna; Benefield, Jacqueline; Böhlke, John K.; Chesson, Lesley A.; Coplen, Tyler B.; Ding, Tiping; Dunn, Philip J. H.; Gröning, Manfred; Holden, Norman E.; Meijer, Harro A. J. (2022-05-04). "Standard atomic weights of the elements 2021 (IUPAC Technical Report)". Pure and Applied Chemistry. doi:10.1515/pac-2019-0603. ISSN 1365-3075.
  4. ^ Meshik, A.P.; Hohenberg, C.M.; Pravdivtseva, O.V.; Kapusta, Y.S. (2001). "Weak decay of 130Ba and 132Ba: Geochemical measurements". Physical Review C. 64 (3): 035205–1–035205–6. Bibcode:2001PhRvC..64c5205M. doi:10.1103/PhysRevC.64.035205.
  5. ^ M. Pujol; B. Marty; P. Burnard; P. Philippot (2009). "Xenon in Archean barite: Weak decay of 130Ba, mass-dependent isotopic fractionation and implication for barite formation". Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. 73 (22): 6834–6846. Bibcode:2009GeCoA..73.6834P. doi:10.1016/j.gca.2009.08.002.