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Particle Decays And Annihilations : Missing Mass We still need to answer the question, where does the missing mass in a radioactive decay go? Recall that we said that when uranium decays into thorium and an alpha particle, 0.0046 AMU of mass appears to have been lost. As Einstein said, ![]() There is a lot of energy stored up in the residual strong force that holds uranium nuclei together. When these nuclei undergo radioactive decay, some of this energy is released as kinetic energy (the energy of the moving particles). This conversion of energy is observed as a loss of mass. |