Surprise! Nuclear decay rates seem to be dependent on Earth's orbitalposition

Slashdot | Nuclear Decay May Vary With Earth-Sun Distance
""We've long thought that nuclear decay rates are constant regardless of
ambient conditions (except in a few special cases where beta decay can
be influenced by powerful electric fields). So that makes it hard to
explain two puzzling experiments from the 1980s that found periodic
variations over many years in the decay rates of silicon-32 and
radium-226. Now a new analysis of the raw data says that changes in the
decay rate are synchronized with each other and with Earth's distance
from the sun. The physicists behind this work offer two theories to
explain why this might be happening (abstract). First, some theorists
think the sun produces a field that changes the value of the fine
structure constant on Earth as its distance from the sun varies. That
would certainly affect the rate of nuclear decay. Another idea is that
the effect is caused by some kind of interaction with the neutrino flux
from the sun's interior which also varies with distance. Take your pick.
What makes the whole story even more intriguing is that for years
physicists have disagreed over the decay rates of several isotopes such
as titanium-44, silicon-32, and cesium-137. Perhaps they took their data
at different times of the year?""
http://science.slashdot.org/article..../08/29/1227239

More details he
the physics arXiv blog » Blog Archive » Do nuclear decay rates depend on
our distance from the sun?
http://arxivblog.com/?p=596

Most details he
[0808.3283] Evidence for Correlations Between Nuclear Decay Rates and
Earth-Sun Distance
http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3283

On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:51:25 -0400) it happened Yousuf Khan
wrote in :

Slashdot | Nuclear Decay May Vary With Earth-Sun Distance

Very interesting.
I could envisision neutrinos knocking stuff lose...

http://science.slashdot.org/article..../08/29/1227239
http://arxivblog.com/?p=596
http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3283

On Aug 30, 5:05 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:51:25 -0400) it happened Yousuf Khan
wrote in :

Slashdot | Nuclear Decay May Vary With Earth-Sun Distance

Very interesting.
I could envisision neutrinos knocking stuff lose...

http://science.slashdot.org/article..../08/29/1227239
http://arxivblog.com/?p=596
http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3283

Well, don't they have big vats of liquid deep down in mines that don't
seem to get knocked loose so often?

Anyways, this is another nail in the coffin for those physicists who
insist that the laws of physics aren't affected by our local
environment, and therefore is the same all across the universe.

Yousuf Khan

Jan Panteltje wrote in news:g9ccm4$m26$1
@aioe.org:

On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:51:25 -0400) it happened Yousuf Khan
wrote in :

Slashdot | Nuclear Decay May Vary With Earth-Sun Distance

Very interesting.
I could envisision neutrinos knocking stuff lose...

http://science.slashdot.org/article..../08/29/1227239
http://arxivblog.com/?p=596
http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3283

It's a mistake. ?

On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:39:24 -0700 (PDT)) it happened YKhan
wrote in
:

On Aug 30, 5:05 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:51:25 -0400) it happened Yousuf Khan
wrote in :

Slashdot | Nuclear Decay May Vary With Earth-Sun Distance

Very interesting.
I could envisision neutrinos knocking stuff lose...

http://science.slashdot.org/article..../08/29/1227239
http://arxivblog.com/?p=596
http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3283

Well, don't they have big vats of liquid deep down in mines that don't
seem to get knocked loose so often?

Sure, but with neutrinos, there are so many of them in every cubic
centimeter.
Quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino:
'more than 50 trillion solar electron neutrinos pass through the human body every second'
'For typical neutrinos produced in the sun (with energies of a few MeV), it would take approximately one light year (~1016 m) of lead to block half of them.'



Anyways, this is another nail in the coffin for those physicists who
insist that the laws of physics aren't affected by our local
environment, and therefore is the same all across the universe.

Yousuf Khan

The laws are the same perhaps, but the neutrino should perhaps be a parameter in the equation.

Just makes me wonder if there would be _no_ decay without neutrinos :-)

Jan Panteltje wrote:
Anyways, this is another nail in the coffin for those physicists who
insist that the laws of physics aren't affected by our local
environment, and therefore is the same all across the universe.

Yousuf Khan

The laws are the same perhaps, but the neutrino should perhaps be a parameter in the equation.

Just makes me wonder if there would be _no_ decay without neutrinos :-)

Let's not forget that there was another theory put forward that could
also explain this, which is that the Sun changes the Fine Structure
Constant! This is supposed to be a *constant*, but now it looks like it
may not be. This constant is made up of whole bunch of other physical
constants, so any one of those may have become variable because of this
too. That might be even more mind-blowing than neutrinos.

Fine-structure constant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-structure_constant

Dear Jan Panteltje:

"Jan Panteltje" wrote in message
...
On a sunny day (Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:39:24 -0700 (PDT)) it
happened YKhan
wrote in
:
....

Anyways, this is another nail in the coffin for
those physicists who insist that the laws of
physics aren't affected by our local
environment, and therefore is the same all
across the universe.

The laws are the same perhaps, but the
neutrino should perhaps be a parameter in
the equation.

Just makes me wonder if there would be
_no_ decay without neutrinos :-)

Since that isn't possible, what if we doubled the number of
neutrinos in a given volume of space?

David A. Smith

On Aug 30, 4:51*pm, Yousuf Khan wrote:
Slashdot | Nuclear Decay May Vary With Earth-Sun Distance
""We've long thought that nuclear decay rates are constant regardless of
ambient conditions (except in a few special cases where beta decay can
be influenced by powerful electric fields). So that makes it hard to
explain two puzzling experiments from the 1980s that found periodic
variations over many years in the decay rates of silicon-32 and
radium-226. Now a new analysis of the raw data says that changes in the
decay rate are synchronized with each other and with Earth's distance
from the sun. The physicists behind this work offer two theories to
explain why this might be happening (abstract). First, some theorists
think the sun produces a field that changes the value of the fine
structure constant on Earth as its distance from the sun varies. That
would certainly affect the rate of nuclear decay. Another idea is that
the effect is caused by some kind of interaction with the neutrino flux
from the sun's interior which also varies with distance. Take your pick.
What makes the whole story even more intriguing is that for years
physicists have disagreed over the decay rates of several isotopes such
as titanium-44, silicon-32, and cesium-137. Perhaps they took their data
at different times of the year?""http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/29/1227239

More details he
the physics arXiv blog » Blog Archive » Do nuclear decay rates depend on
our distance from the sun?http://arxivblog.com/?p=596

Most details he
[0808.3283] Evidence for Correlations Between Nuclear Decay Rates and
Earth-Sun Distancehttp://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3283

The flux of solar neutrinos varies insignificantly between night and
day.

During the day - N / (93,000,000-4000)^2
At night - N / (93,000,000+4000)^2

93,000,000 is earth-sun distance in miles.
4000 is earth's radius in miles.

Virtually none of the neutrinos is absorbed by the earth.

Raphanus writes:

The flux of solar neutrinos varies insignificantly between night and
day.

During the day - N / (93,000,000-4000)^2
At night - N / (93,000,000+4000)^2

93,000,000 is earth-sun distance in miles.
4000 is earth's radius in miles.

Virtually none of the neutrinos is absorbed by the earth.

However, I believe there is indeed a solar neutrino day-night
effect. (for example Smy et al. 2003, "The Solar Day/Night Effect in
Super-Kamiokande", arxiv:hep-ex/0310064v1)

CM

Sam Wormley wrote:
So are these decay rates in agreement this the gravitational time
dilation predicted by general relativity?


I'm sure it does, but that's only because it's such a minor
consideration in this case. They are talking about the Earth's aphelion
(farthest) and perihelion (closest) distances from the Sun, 91.4 million
miles & 94.5 million miles respectively. Aphelion occurs in June,
perihelion in January. There's a 3.1 million mile difference in
distances between the two, and they're saying that nuclear decay rates
vary between these two extremes.

Yousuf Khan