From Stanford University News a really wild must read science discovery.
h/t to Leif Svalgaard and WUWT reader “carbon-based-life-form”.
The strange case of solar flares and radioactive elements
When researchers found an unusual linkage between solar flares and the inner life of radioactive elements on Earth, it touched off a scientific detective investigation that could end up protecting the lives of space-walking astronauts and maybe rewriting some of the assumptions of physics.
BY DAN STOBER
It’s a mystery that presented itself unexpectedly: The radioactive decay of some elements sitting quietly in laboratories on Earth seemed to be influenced by activities inside the sun, 93 million miles away.
Is this possible?
Researchers from Stanford and Purdue University believe it is. But their explanation of how it happens opens the door to yet another mystery.
There is even an outside chance that this unexpected effect is brought about by a previously unknown particle emitted by the sun. “That would be truly remarkable,” said Peter Sturrock, Stanford professor emeritus of applied physics and an expert on the inner workings of the sun.
The story begins, in a sense, in classrooms around the world, where students are taught that the rate of decay of a specific radioactive material is a constant. This concept is relied upon, for example, when anthropologists use carbon-14 to date ancient artifacts and
when doctors determine the proper dose of radioactivity to treat a cancer patient.
Random numbers
But that assumption was challenged in an unexpected way by a group of researchers from Purdue University who at the time were more interested in random numbers than nuclear decay. (Scientists use long strings of random numbers for a variety of calculations, but they are difficult to produce, since the process used to produce the numbers has an influence on the outcome.)
Ephraim Fischbach, a physics professor at Purdue, was looking into the rate of radioactive decay of several isotopes as a possible source of random numbers generated without any human input. (A lump of radioactive cesium-137, for example, may decay at a steady rate overall, but individual atoms within the lump will decay in an unpredictable, random pattern. Thus the timing of the random ticks of a Geiger counter placed near the cesium might be used to generate random numbers.)
As the researchers pored through published data on specific isotopes, they found disagreement in the measured decay rates – odd for supposed physical constants.
Checking data collected at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island and the Federal Physical and Technical Institute in Germany, they came across something even more surprising: long-term observation of the decay rate of silicon-32 and radium-226 seemed to show a small seasonal variation. The decay rate was ever so slightly faster in winter than in summer.
Was this fluctuation real, or was it merely a glitch in the equipment used to measure the decay, induced by the change of seasons, with the accompanying changes in temperature and humidity?
“Everyone thought it must be due to experimental mistakes, because we’re all brought up to believe that decay rates are constant,” Sturrock said.
The sun speaks
On Dec 13, 2006, the sun itself provided a crucial clue, when a solar flare sent a stream of particles and radiation toward Earth. Purdue nuclear engineer Jere Jenkins, while measuring the decay rate of manganese-54, a short-lived isotope used in medical diagnostics, noticed that the rate dropped slightly during the flare, a decrease that started about a day and a half before the flare.
If this apparent relationship between flares and decay rates proves true, it could lead to a method of predicting solar flares prior to their occurrence, which could help prevent damage to satellites and electric grids, as well as save the lives of astronauts in space.
The decay-rate aberrations that Jenkins noticed occurred during the middle of the night in Indiana – meaning that something produced by the sun had traveled all the way through the Earth to reach Jenkins’ detectors. What could the flare send forth that could have such an effect?
Jenkins and Fischbach guessed that the culprits in this bit of decay-rate mischief were probably solar neutrinos, the almost weightless particles famous for flying at almost the speed of light through the physical world – humans, rocks, oceans or planets – with virtually no interaction with anything.
Then, in a series of papers published in Astroparticle Physics, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research and Space Science Reviews, Jenkins, Fischbach and their colleagues showed that the observed variations in decay rates were highly unlikely to have come from environmental influences on the detection systems.
Reason for suspicion
Their findings strengthened the argument that the strange swings in decay rates were caused by neutrinos from the sun. The swings seemed to be in synch with the Earth’s elliptical orbit, with the decay rates oscillating as the Earth came closer to the sun (where it would be exposed to more neutrinos) and then moving away.
So there was good reason to suspect the sun, but could it be proved?
Enter Peter Sturrock, Stanford professor emeritus of applied physics and an expert on the inner workings of the sun. While on a visit to the National Solar Observatory in Arizona, Sturrock was handed copies of the scientific journal articles written by the Purdue researchers.
Sturrock knew from long experience that the intensity of the barrage of neutrinos the sun continuously sends racing toward Earth varies on a regular basis as the sun itself revolves and shows a different face, like a slower version of the revolving light on a police car. His advice to Purdue: Look for evidence that the changes in radioactive decay on Earth vary with the rotation of the sun. “That’s what I suggested. And that’s what we have done.”
A surprise
Going back to take another look at the decay data from the Brookhaven lab, the researchers found a recurring pattern of 33 days. It was a bit of a surprise, given that most solar observations show a pattern of about 28 days – the rotation rate of the surface of the sun.
The explanation? The core of the sun – where nuclear reactions produce neutrinos – apparently spins more slowly than the surface we see. “It may seem counter-intuitive, but it looks as if the core rotates more slowly than the rest of the sun,” Sturrock said.
All of the evidence points toward a conclusion that the sun is “communicating” with radioactive isotopes on Earth, said Fischbach.
But there’s one rather large question left unanswered. No one knows how neutrinos could interact with radioactive materials to change their rate of decay.
“It doesn’t make sense according to conventional ideas,” Fischbach said. Jenkins whimsically added, “What we’re suggesting is that something that doesn’t really interact with anything is changing something that can’t be changed.”
“It’s an effect that no one yet understands,” agreed Sturrock. “Theorists are starting to say, ‘What’s going on?’ But that’s what the evidence points to. It’s a challenge for the physicists and a challenge for the solar people too.”
If the mystery particle is not a neutrino, “It would have to be something we don’t know about, an unknown particle that is also emitted by the sun and has this effect, and that would be even more remarkable,” Sturrock said.
Chantal Jolagh, a science-writing intern at the Stanford News Service, contributed to this story.
Experimental test of neutrino stimulated decay (under conditions appropriate to the conjectured solar effect) would be more difficult than I initially appreciated. The snag is that in order to get a collimated beam of neutrinos one would need a highly collimated relativistic primary beam of eg muons (otherwise the decay neutrinos would spray out in all directions). This is easy enough, but then the neutrinos will themselves be “relativistic” (that is, of high energy ~1GeV, say, much more energetic than the fusion-generated solar neutrinos). Stimulated and induced decay modes at these energies will still be calculable and measureable, but would not directly confirm the behaviour expected at lower energies. It would still be worth doing, though.
Dave Springer says:
August 26, 2010 at 2:55 am
Dark matter and dark energy are only observed indirectly by gravitational anomalies.
In fact, they are not observed at all, directly or indirectly, but inferred from a set of assumptions which include the weakest of the fundamental forces being the only one which matters at interstellar scales.
Alexander Feht says
“BBT has established itself in modern cosmological circles for exactly the same reason that made the AGW theory “mandatory” in the climatological community: conformism”
Big Band Theory (BBT) was invented by a priest. It was at first called ‘the hypothesis of the primeval atom.’
It replaced Christianity as the state religion of the West around 1930. Fred Hoyle, who supported the steady state theory, was ridiculing the theory when, unfortunately, he gave it the catchy name the Big Bang Theory in 1949.
AGW replaced BBT as the West’s state religion around 1990. This was at the time scary atheist communism collapsed and could no longer be considered a threat. So we were told to fear fresh air by our new priests, so called ‘climate scientists’.
Christianity from 0- 1930
BBT from 1930-1990
AGW from 1990-2010?
It is encouraging that religions are having shorter lives.
Dave Springer says:
August 26, 2010 at 2:16 am
Paul Birch says: “No, they are established over practically the whole visible universe over practically its entire history.”
“That’s utter nonsense, Paul. Let’s take a galaxy a billion light years away. Can you tell me what it looks like today? Of course not. Assuming that it is indeed a billion light years away and assuming that the speed of light is constant then you can only tell me what it looked like 1 billion years ago as that is the only information about it that has reached us today.”
Yes, we can tell you what it looks like today. Not in particular detail, but in general, because we know what similar, closer galaxies look like. We can see the same physical phenomena occurring over billions of parsecs of distance at both the same time (or same redshift) and at vastly different times up to billions of years apart.
“And I must reiterate that you are still using circular reasoning – assuming that which is to be proven.”
No, I’m not. It doesn’t matter what the distances actually are or what the redshifts mean. The fact is that we can measure things like the fine structure constant throughout the entire visible universe, and find them to be constant (within the limits of experimental error).
“And no, the whole edifice doesn’t hang together. If it did then dark matter and dark energy would not have been invented as placeholders for unexplained, unexpected observations.”
They haven’t been. I’ve explained this before. The astronomical dark matter required by the observations is quite ordinary matter which happens not to be in main sequence stars or which is hidden by dust, etc., and which we have always known to be present, because we can observe much of it in our local neighbourhood. The weirdified “dark matter” and “dark energy” is largely an invention of theorists who don’t like what the cosmological observations are telling them (that the universe is open and qo small). They are not required by the observations, and the Big Bang theory works quite well without them. But whether or not they exist, astronomical observations are physically consistent only with fundamental physical constants that don’t vary significantly over time and space (conceivably they might vary in an inflationary phase of expansion, or in the depths of black holes, or something, but not in ordinary galactic and intergalactic environments). It is important to appreciate that, despite areas of uncertainty and even complete ignorance, despite puzzles and anomalies like the quasar alignments that suggest that at least some redshifts may not be entirely cosmological, there is a great deal that we do know, to a high level of confidence, and a great many theories we can positively rule out. Most fringe theories are in that category; they are inconsistent with what we do know, and thus plain wrong, however elegant or attractive they might seem, or however many oddities they might seem to explain. Most of them are merely recycled versions of old theories long disproved.
Roger Clague says:
August 26, 2010 at 4:27 am
Christianity from 0- 1930
BBT from 1930-1990
AGW from 1990-2010?
It is encouraging that religions are having shorter lives.
Maybe we are rapidly approaching the DUH (Dogmatic Universe Horizon).
I predict a New Renaissance heralding the growth of new cosmological thinking, the sweeping away of ‘Global Warming Art’, and the birth of a new post-positivist school of free enquiry, embracing the plurality of possible interpretations of phenomena as a benefit to the cross fertilisation of ideas unfettered from the agendas of institutions.
In fact it’s already happening in the blogosphere.
🙂
EM attraction is gravity at the 39th power. Neither dark matter needed nor any nanny inventions of presumptuous kids, pretending they are sages for using entangled and esoteric equations. Just think on the simplicity of the Monocord of Pitagoras: There he found all the laws of the universe, that self conceit makes impossible for fools to understand. Just explain how Thales, about six hundred years BC found that water was icosaedric. It doesn´t matter how many gadgets or computer games kids have we have not progressed in the comprehension of the cosmos.
However, if you need contemporary theories without phantoms coming from the twilight zone, see:
http://www.milesmathis.com/lostmass.html
http://www.holoscience.com/
What do all the Big Bang heretics here think of Johan Masreliez’ Expanding Spacetime Theory? Looks like a fascinating alternative to BBT from the little I have read (and understood, I only took an introductory astronomy course at the university). I haven’t been able to google up any really severe rebuttals to the EST theory – so if you know of any, please post them (and btw Masreliez can explain the Pioneer anomaly with his theory).
tallbloke says:
August 26, 2010 at 5:43 am
Bravo!
What differentiates scientific theories from theological theories and religions is the construct of mathematics.
To people with little or no mathematical ability the strength, resilience and utility of mathematically founded theories is as much a leitourgy as is theology. This is a mistake.
The Big Bang Theory may prove not to be the solution nature has chosen of the fundamental equations of the universe, but it is a solution and many observations have fitted like a jigsaw puzzle into its format.
It shows great naivety to bunch physical theories with religion.
Popularization of science does not mean that everyman can partake of the knowledge of science like a smorgasbord open to all, without paying the dues of years upon years of studying mathematics and physics etc.
Science is not something that can be bought and sold, not something that can be discussed ad infinitum in coffee shops. It is something one has to put elbow grease and many years of solving puzzles , before mastering it, and having the tools at hand to be able to discuss with other hard working geeks about theories and the fit to data.
Enneagram :
August 26, 2010 at 5:49 am
It is interesting that string theories, the latest theories in elementary particles that aim at including quantized gravity, are mono-chord theories. All particles are vibrations of a string/chord.
Espen says:
August 26, 2010 at 6:50 am
Don’t get confused, time is subjective.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 25, 2010 at 4:03 pm
Science has its own take on that based on precise measurements and theories that are confirmed in great detail.
The precision of the measurements is a joy to behold. The engineers are doing a good job.
Not every idea carries the same weight
True, especially when you simply conjure up most of the weight out of thin air to give your theory more gravitas.
tallbloke says:
August 26, 2010 at 8:09 am
That is true: Gadgets work thanks to engineering and heuristics, the rest is just imagination and self deceit.
Dreaming….I’m always dreaming….
I almost wrote dark matter & energy are “inferred from” observed gravitational anomalies instead of “observed indirectly from”” so I’m not inclined to disagree with you that it was a poor choice of words.
“Interesting” is an understatement. We need to be clear what “random” means in this context. The jury is still out on the philosophical question of determinism so when you hear “random” it’s shorthand for “unpredictable by any known means”. It’s also a bit paradoxical in that it’s unpredictable by quantum mechanical analysis but has heretofore been one of the most predictable things for statistical mechanics. The implications of radioactive decay being throttled by some unknown means is huge especially if we can generate the means artificially. The practical applications of easily controlling nuclear decay rate are enormous. Imagine a nuclear reactor that instead of having complicated mechanical systems of control rods and cooling water could be throttled up remotely via some sort of particle beam or field generator where if the throttle fails it becomes harmless instead of possibly going into meltdown.
Dave Springer says:
August 26, 2010 at 9:34 am
“Imagine a nuclear reactor that instead of having complicated mechanical systems of control rods and cooling water could be throttled up remotely via some sort of particle beam or field generator where if the throttle fails it becomes harmless instead of possibly going into meltdown.”
We don’t have to imagine it. That’s how nuclear reactors work. The decay of uranium by fission is “throttled” by neutrons. While nuclear bombs often have a separate neutron source to make sure the reaction happens fast enough.
If you replace the word science with religion then that strongly resembles what theologians will say to you. So Anna, have you put years and years into the study of theology, epistimology, and so forth? If not then by your own admission you are not qualified to speak about it. Yet you have. Hypocrisy is rampant.
@Paul
I’m quite well aware that nuclear reactors are throttled by neutron flux. I’m quite well aware that graphite rods are inserted more or less deeply into the reactor pile to absorb more or less neutrons. If you continue talking down to me I’m going to start returning the favor. Fair warning.
You know, quantum/particle physics is beyond my education in nuclear engineering, so I’m not even going to posit a guess at what’s going on here.
I personally found the piece interesting and also note that is has no immediately recognizable connection to the climate. Isn’t it AMAZING how these guys can ask “way out there” scientific questions like “how?” and “why?” and even say “we have no idea” when it isn’t a “climate change” issue?
This reminds me of what I learned that science really is. Observe an anomaly, report, question, control an experiment, observe again, report again, answer old questions and ask new ones, repeat. As a scientist, you’re out of a job once the debate is settled…
@Paul (con’t)
Now I must question your understanding of what intense neutron flux does to the materials that make up the reactor control and safety mechanisms. Metals that make up pipes and valves and welds in the coolant delivery system become brittle due to it and subject to catastrophic failure. Same goes for the mechanisms and structure that raise and lower control rods. That’s why reactors have melted down. There’s no sure failsafe mechanism. It’s a hideously expensive maintenance nightmare as the reactors have to be shut down and everything tediously inspected and/or replaced at regular intervals.
Now contrast this with a neutrino beam can modulate the reaction rate. Neutrinos don’t do jack diddly squat to degrade materials. They pass through normal matter like it like it wasn’t there. So just as an example you could have a neutrino generator located outside the containment vessel and it could safely throttle the reaction and if the generator fails the reaction just stops or slows down enough so that it’s effectively halted. I’m not saying that’s possible but if it were possible it would radically alter the way nuclear reactors are built and operated. Other practical possibilities include turning long-lived radioactive waste products into short-lived products or rendering them non-radioactive altogether and thus solve the large, continuing, and growing problem with spent fuel storage and disposal.
If these findings call into question the ‘half-life’ of certain elements used to determine the age of the earth – is the accepted age of our planet called into question too?
ec
I mean…it’s like Peter Sturrock landed a UFO right in the middle of the pitch.
Dave Springer says:
anna v says at 7:46 am:
Science is not something that can be bought and sold, not something that can be discussed ad infinitum in coffee shops. It is something one has to put elbow grease and many years of solving puzzles , before mastering it, and having the tools at hand to be able to discuss with other hard working geeks about theories and the fit to data.
“If you replace the word science with religion then that strongly resembles what theologians will say to you.”
With possibly the exception of anna’s first sentence above [some scientists use unethical scare tactics to generate grants, showing they can be bought and sold], I happen to agree with what she wrote, including the preamble to her quote above:
What differentiates scientific theories from theological theories and religions is the construct of mathematics.
To people with little or no mathematical ability the strength, resilience and utility of mathematically founded theories is as much a liturgy as is theology. This is a mistake.
The Big Bang Theory may prove not to be the solution nature has chosen of the fundamental equations of the universe, but it is a solution and many observations have fitted like a jigsaw puzzle into its format.
It shows great naivety to bunch physical theories with religion.
Popularization of science does not mean that everyman can partake of the knowledge of science like a smorgasbord open to all, without paying the dues of years upon years of studying mathematics and physics etc.
There is faith [religion] and there is skepticism [science]. They are not the same. Those pushing their post-normal, faith-based CAGW pseudo-science while they jettison the scientific method are simply Jim & Tammy Faye-style preachers in white lab coats, trading their ethics for grants.
Dave Springer says:
August 26, 2010 at 10:41 am “Now I must question your understanding of what intense neutron flux does to the materials that make up the reactor control and safety mechanisms.”
I never said anything about them. However, fail-safe methods of control are available. The simplest is thermal expansion; for many kinds of reactor, if the core overheats it expands, or produces vapour bubbles in the coolant, causing more neutrons to escape, or fewer to be moderated, and thus immediately shutting down the reaction. One could also quite easily build a reactor with no internal control mechanisms, using a neutron beam from outside as the “throttle”. IIRC there are specialised research reactors that do just that. Although it is true that a simple failure of such a control beam will shut down the reactor harmlessly, it is also true that a surge in the beam could (in principle) cause a super-critical out-of-control chain reaction (something of the sort can happen with nuclear weapons, in the process known as “fratricide”, where the neutron flux from a nearby explosion triggers a premature and partial detonation). There’s no reason to suppose that the control beam route must be superior to the simpler mechanical arrangements (if it were, we’d probably already be using it in commercial power plants).
“Now contrast this with a neutrino beam can modulate the reaction rate. Neutrinos don’t do jack diddly squat to degrade materials. They pass through normal matter like it like it wasn’t there.”
Neutrinos don’t do diddly squat to modulate fission either. If they did – if you had a beam powerful enough to cause such an effect (which would mean a trillion times more powerful than a neutron beam to do the same job) – it would also powerfully induce beta decay in the reactor materials (and all the way through the Earth). You’d get essentially the same problems as you do with neutrons, only worse. Also, the amount of energy you’d be throwing away in the neutrino beam would vastly exceed the energy you’d get from the reactor. Even if the reported decay rate effect were real, and caused as conjectured by solar neutrinos (which is very unlikely), it would still be far too weak an effect to be of much if any practical use.
John Walker of the Hotbits site that generates random numbers by radioactive decay has weighed in on the new report, at
http://www.fourmilab.ch/fourmilog/archives/2010-08/001250.html
He wishes it were true because it would be scientifically interesting, but has grown skeptical of small effects observed with large noise by instruments that may be environmentally influenced (eg by known variations in background cosmic rays).