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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 u of mass appears to have been lost. As Einstein said, ![]() When uranium nuclei undergo radioactive decay, some of their mass is converted into kinetic energy (the energy of the moving particles). This conversion of energy is observed as a loss of mass. |