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Advance Warning System For Solar Flares Hinges On Surprising Hypothesis
cylonlover writes "Scientists may have hit upon a new means of predicting solar flares more than a day in advance, which hinges on a hypothesis dating back to 2006 that solar activity affects the rate of decay of radioactive materials on Earth. Study of the phenomenon could lead to a new system which monitors changes in gamma radiation emitted from radioactive materials, and if the underlying hypothesis proves correct (abstract), this could lead to solar flare advance warning systems that would assist in the protection of satellites, power systems and astronauts."
radioactive decay is not as random as we thought. So where do we get random numbers that are good?
Nothing can effect the rate of decay of radioactive materials; it is, has been, and always will be constant. Just like the carbon 12/14 balance.
Is there any way we could harness the power of solar flares to provide energy (either for space-based installations or to beam back to Earth)? Now if we know when they're coming farther in advance, it seems we could better take advantage of them. Not a continuous stream of energy, to be sure, but it a boost every now and then could help take the load off other sources of energy.
The greatest discoveries don't come from a "Eureka!", but from a "Huh, that's odd..." (Be careful though, the young earthers are already jumping on this to try and disprove carbon dating.)
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
If this is the case, then what does this mean for dating methods that depend on decay rates?
If the rate of radioactive decay can vary, how would this affect things like carbon 14 dating? Very interesting.
I always thought these were fairly constant, does this theory mess up any of our current Radiometric dating (and other similar) methods?
Sure a few solar flares might not do much effect, but when we are talking hundreds of millions of years ago the sun might of been in a totally different state that caused different decays over long periods of time, than we previously thought.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I recall reading about this here on slashdot several years ago (guessing '96), and thought that it was disproved not lang after. I might be wrong though
Researchers at Purdue are busy creating early-warning earthquake detectors based around when their dogs all start acting weird.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Well, let's see. Both radioactive decay and neutrinos interact through the weak nuclear force, so to suggest that the scientific plausibility is "insane" is, well...
Non replicable data also not really science.
There is no lack of people who would look into this, and to be sure many top people have. There have been many people coming forward since to show data that doesn't exhibit this pattern. Thats a huge problem.
The burden of proof is on the claimant and its far from proven.
This has to be either a systematic or a fluke. The only thing that could conceivably have an influence on nuclear decay rates is...
Okay, wait.
This guy has evidence which your model doesn't account for. You're saying that the evidence can't be right because it isn't accounted for by your model?
That's not science, that's politics.
If he's got evidence, either counter with your own evidence or show that his evidence is fabricated.
Try actually being a scientist, instead of pretending to act like one.
Holy cow. Only on Slashdot can some internet tough guy say "I don't care what people who are actually studying this think. I know better because I can throw words like 'neutrino' and 'plausibility' around." And then get modded up to +5 insightful.
I'm not even going to waste a mod point making this a +4 instead. What's the point? Good grief.
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
If everyone has that mindset to avoid testing "batshit crazy" theories, we will not produce new ones. Physics is not an area where truth is final..
You want repeatable experiments. Those guys want to try them - and you're calling that insane. Maybe that will lead to discovery of yet another, different explanation and mechanism that was attributable to neutrinos only on first estimation.
A good definition of "scientific" is "refutable". This one certainly qualifies. So let them try and not drown them in skepticism right away.
saying we can get anti gravity devices to work because it was on star trek.
The scientific plausibility of nuclear decay to vary because of neutrinos is one level below insane.
The standard model predicts nuclear decay with extreme precision, so until someone comes up with a repeatable compelling theory and or experiment that is consistent with the SM and this sort of effect on decay I wouldn't give this much thought.
You've got that backwards. If we get observations that prove nuclear decay is variable then SM must perforce be revised or thrown out the window entirely.
You haven't been following it very well then. There are other datasets that don't show the variation Jenkins et al see. Plus their habit of writing papers that don't include any statistics OR error bars means their hypothesis (it's definitely not a theory - they don't offer any explanatory or predictive ability at all) is poorly supported in the first place.
The overall conclusion is "extraordinary claims, particularly those in opposition to both theory AND many other experiments, require extraordinary evidence. Or at least ordinary evidence."
Not to mention that reliably detecting seasonal variation requires several years.
The paper has zero statistics, and zero error bars. I'm not sure how it got published in a peer reviewed journal.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269312002341
from the article itself.
It looks very much like an experimental error. The fact they didn't use a multichannel analyser to look at the energy of the signal makes it very hard to exclude background signal (like from the sun, a massive radiation source).
They didn't even use much of a lead shield - 5mm, which is hardly anything for higher energy photons.
Experiments have been done. They don't match these findings. (http://www.nist.gov/mml/analytical/14c_091410.cfm)
Indeed I can.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269312002341...
Thank you! That's an excellent counter-argument.
A quick look at the linked paper shows that they have covered all the bases - temperature, pressure, background radiation, radon, and so on. Their analysis appears to be spot-on, but at the same time I hope that they continue the experiment in order to really pound the last nail in the coffin.
From that same article:
Some of the measurements and analysis conrm the existence of oscillations [6, 7] whereas others contradict this hypothesis [8, 9, 10].
Note that this paper is fairly recent (published at the end of March) and is only one such paper which notes the caveats mentioned in the quote above. If we are keeping score, then there are 2 papers which see correlations and 4 which do not.
I am now cautiously optimistic about the [lack of] results, but in light of the recent findings by Jere Jenkins et al and the fact that other studies appear to find similar correlations, it might be good to actually identify the source of systemic error.
If for no better reason than to document the source of the problem to allow for better measurements in the future.
This is just wrong.
There are many thousands of physicists who study neutrino flux from the sun every day. They typically use several 1000 tonnes detectors looking for interaction such as inverse beta decay and they see ~ 1 neutrino interaction per day. Try googling for Super Kamiokande, Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, ...
The solar neutrino flux is generated from nuclear reactions in the core of the sun. Solar flares are generated by magnetic effects at the sun's surface. These two phenomena are almost completely unrelated.