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