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Nuclear Decay May Vary With Earth-Sun Distance
KentuckyFC writes "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?"
Seems that I did all those pesky logarithmic decay problems for Physics 101 in vain....
On a more serious note, how does this influence all those archaeological and geological dating techniques that are based on radioactive decay rates?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
I was thinking the same thing.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
That's how science works. All scientific conclusions are subject to change based on new information. (it's called progress)
Only religion makes claims of absolute truth independent of evidence.
If the Solar System does indeed contain a field which inhibits radioactive decay, even a little, and is dynamic, then can't motion through that field be harnessed as a power source?
Like how the Earth's magnetic field, which is very weak compared to the electromagnetic phenomena that humans generate with which it interacts, still has enough power to drive effects in very tiny devices, like magnetized compass needles, and even smaller microelectronics. Except that we're not really orbiting very much through Earth's magnetic fields that are either really small, or don't have lots more power available from other sources, like solar power or precharged batteries.
But on Earth, though, really small devices that could harness this effect for power are all already flying through this field, showing its effects. And plenty of them aren't candidates for solar power, because they're not reliably hit by sunlight.
If we can understand and engineer this force, can't we make perhaps nanotech with embedded atoms or molecules that are pushed around by this force enough to power the rest of the devices? At a cost of slowing the Earth's orbit by an imperceptible amount, but which is enough wattage to really make a difference in usable machines.
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make install -not war