Question: Do atoms die? If so, is there a special name for them once they're dead?

Pete Etchells answered on 2 Jul 2012:

Hmmm, that’s a tough one! Technically, atoms can’t die, because they were never alive to begin with – if you just had an atom on its own in isolation, so that nothing interacted with it, I think it would carry on existing forever. Atoms can, however, cease to exist in the current form that they’re in, if they undergo a nuclear reaction. In these cases, atoms may split into smaller parts (known as ‘fission’), or two atoms may fuse together to form a new atom (‘fusion’).