Equation 3 · Radioactive Clocks: How Nuclear Physics Gave Evolution Its Time
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the decay constant characteristic of the isotope. Read the equation part by part below; each part has a contextual explanation and a link to its mathematical background.
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What the article says around this equation
where is the initial population, is the decay constant characteristic of the isotope, and is the half-life derived from it. This is the one place in the article where the evolutionary-population analogy is exact rather than suggestive: a sample of identical atoms behaves, statistically, exactly as a population geneticist’s model of a large population with a fixed per-individual probability of an event per unit time behaves. Individual atoms are unpredictable; the population’s decline is not.
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