Probably not, they have a pretty good handle on why atoms decay, to the point they can predict some to be radioactive before it's actually observed to be (like Bismuth-209).

Also even if something is REALLY REALLY long lasting, you can still check for the halflife by observing enough of it, they've been able to rule out proton halflives under 10^34 years (the universe is on the order of 10^10 years old) but by observing enough protons (like say 50,000 tons of water) you would expect at least some to decay.

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cogman10 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> they have a pretty good handle on why atoms decay

Oh, they actually don't. Radioactive decay, AFAIK, is still an open physics mystery. We know it happens, we don't know why, what causes it, or if there even is a cause. We can predict factors that make it more likely.

> to the point they can predict some to be radioactive before it's actually observed to be (like Bismuth-209).

Right, but Xenon 124 wasn't predicted to be radioactive which is what makes it fascinating. It shows holes in what we can predict as being radioactive which is what makes me wonder about everything being radioactive but the timetable is too far out.

	▲	mr_mitm 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Where is the mystery? Any system can spontaneously transform into a new state with a probability greater than zero unless some conservation law prevents it. In a sense it's just quantum tunneling.