What is the most unstable subatomic particle?

Answer 1

Cobalt 60 is one of the most dangerously radioactive. 5 minutes of exposure to 1 gram could kill a person within a month. The elements with the shortest half lives are man made and therefore constantly changing. We are presently up to element No:118. All these transuranic elements are unstable

Answer 2

There are three commonly referred to subatomic particles, the proton, the neutron, and the electron. Inside of the atom itself, all three are stable. However, as free particles, only protons and electrons are stable. Neutrons are radioactive and decay with a half-life of around 15 minutes.

Edit: Although those are the three most common particles, there are several others (e.g.: Delta Particle, Lambda, Upsilon, etc.) made of different types of quarks besides Up and Down (two U and one D make a proton, two D and one U make a neutron) and have charges of 2/3 and -1/3, respectively. The general rule of thumb is if a particle has more massive constituents then it will be more unstable than a particle with less massive constituents.

Another Edit: Sorry for just now remembering to add this in. In addition to the above, some models predict that protons aren't stable but merely have a very long half-life. The most notable one is Supersymmetry, where all particles have very massive superpartners; these are called sparticles. Fermions will have s to distinguish them and bosons are distinguished by having ino at the end (e.g.: squark, slepton, photino)

Answer 3

The most unstable subatomic particle is believed to be the top quark, which decays extremely quickly into other particles due to its high mass. It has a very short lifetime of about 5 x 10^-25 seconds before it decays through the weak force.

Answer 4

Francium(Fr) is the most unstable element on the Periodic table

Answer 5

Some unstable elments are lythium rubidum and caesium

Answer 6

fluorine it only needs one electron to have an octet (and become stable).. which makes it very "grabby" (not a very technical term, sorry) at other elements.

Answer 7

I think nitroglycerin but I'm not possitive!

Answer 8

Gold is the most stable element.

Answer 9

helium