Scientists observed a very rare occurrence that’s older than the universe
The XENON1T dark matter detector observed and recorded the radioactive decay of a xenon-124 atom, which in and of itself is not rare. However, what makes this particular event so special is the amount of time that it took for theatom to complete its decay.
The half-life of xenon was recorded as 18 billion trillion years, which is by far the longest process that has ever been measured directly. The amount of xenon recorded is also a staggering one trillion times more than the universe’s age. To put it simply, this information is mind-boggling.