Isotopes of osmium

Osmium (₇₆Os) has seven naturally occurring isotopes, five of which are stable: ¹⁸⁷Os, ¹⁸⁸Os, ¹⁸⁹Os, ¹⁹⁰Os, and (most abundant) ¹⁹²Os. The other natural isotopes, ¹⁸⁴Os, and ¹⁸⁶Os, have extremely long half-life (1.12×10¹³ years and 2×10¹⁵ years, respectively) and for practical purposes can be considered to be stable as well. ¹⁸⁷Os is the daughter of ¹⁸⁷Re (half-life 4.12×10¹⁰ years) and is most often measured in an ¹⁸⁷Os/¹⁸⁸Os ratio. This ratio, as well as the ¹⁸⁷Re/¹⁸⁸Os ratio, have been used extensively in dating terrestrial as well as meteoric rocks. It has also been used to measure the intensity of continental weathering over geologic time and to fix minimum ages for stabilization of the mantle roots of continental cratons. However, the most notable application of Os in dating has been in conjunction with iridium, to analyze the layer of shocked quartz along the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary that marks the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

There are also 31 artificial radioisotopes,^[5] the longest-lived of which is ¹⁹⁴Os with a half-life of six years; all others have half-lives under 93 days. There are also ten known nuclear isomers, the longest-lived of which is ^191mOs with a half-life of 13.10 hours. All isotopes and nuclear isomers of osmium are either radioactive or observationally stable, meaning that they are predicted to be radioactive but no actual decay has been observed.