Via slashdot:
A couple of days ago, WUWT carried a story that was rather shocking: some physicists published claims they have detected a variation in earthly radioactive decay rates, big news by itself, but the shocker is they attributed it to solar neutrinos.
The findings attracted immediate attention because they seemed to violate two known basic facts of physics:
1. Radioactive decay is a constant
2. Neutrinos very rarely interact with matter and are hard to detect when they do.
For example: trillions of the neutrinos are zipping through your body right now. So why would they interact with radioactive elements in a more detectable way?
Discover Magazine’s blog 80beats followed up on the initial story buzzing around the web this week and interviewed several physicists who work on neutrinos. The neutrino-affecting-radioactive decay theory is being questioned.
Excerpts:
“My gut reaction is one of skepticism,” Sullivan told DISCOVER. The idea isn’t impossible, he says, but you can’t accept a solution as radical as the new study’s with just the small data set the researchers have. “Data is data. That’s the final arbiter. But the more one has to bend [well-establish physics], the evidence has to be that much more scrutinized.”
Among the reasons Sullivan cited for his skepticism after reading the papers:
- Many of the tiny variations that the study authors saw in radioactive decay rates came from labs like Brookhaven National Lab—the researchers didn’t take the readings themselves. And, Sullivan says, some are multiple decades old. In their paper, Fischbach’s team takes care to try to rule out variations in the equipment or environmental conditions that could have caused the weird changes they saw in decay rates. But, Sullivan says, “they’re people 30 years later [studying] equipment they weren’t running. I don’t think they rule it out.”
- The Purdue-Stanford team cites an example of a 2006 solar flare, saying that they saw a dip in decay rates in a manganese isotope before the occurrence that lasted until after it was gone. Sullivan, however, says he isn’t convinced this is experimentally significant, and anyway it doesn’t make sense: Solar neutrinos emanate from the interior of the sun—not the surface, where flares emerge. Moreover, he says, other solar events like x-ray flares didn’t have the same effect.
- If it were true, the idea would represent a huge jump in neutrino physics. At the Super-Kamiokande detector, Sullivan says only about 10 neutrinos per day appeared to interact with the 20 kilotons of water. Sullivan says the Purdue-Stanford team is proposing that neutrinos are powerfully interacting with matter in a way that has never before been observed. “They’re looking for something with a very much larger effect than the force of neutrinos, but that doesn’t show up any other way,” he says.
Fischbach and Jenkins, who have published a series of journal articles supporting their theory on neutrinos and radioactive decay, emailed DISCOVER to respond to these criticisms of their work. Regarding the first one, the researchers defended the integrity of the data even though they didn’t take it themselves, saying the experiments “were carried out by two well-known and experienced groups. We have published an analysis of these experiments, in Nuclear Instruments and Methods … showing that the potential impact of known environmental effects is much too small to explain the annual variations.”
That model of the Sun seems obsolete:
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=ah63dzac
About Sun´s influence on chemical reactions:
http://www.rexresearch.com/piccardi/piccardi4.pdf
Ahhh … some more real science.
These folks seem to have stirred up quite a hornets nest of controversy. And from the full article comes this gem of true science from a couple of skeptics:
Either way, the outcome should be most interesting.
it is entirly possible that they have found something revolutionary, and it is equally possible that they found an anomally in data due to something outside their control . The process now is to have the data and methodology examined for flaws by anybody with an interest in it. If the data and results stand up we have new science and probably a trip to Sweden. At present there is no definitve answer , but they have found a whole bunch of new questions… which when you look at it is the entire purpose of science.
Game on dueing thesis at 10 paces and high noon
OK… It’s not April 1… But this has to be a joke.
This sounds too much like the plot to 2012.
I wonder if they’ve considered the effect of long-wave gravitics on fusion/nuclear reactions. It’s difficult to know if it would have an effect, given that there would be no real way to detect the presence of a long wave gravity concentration or trough, (say a wave literally years across) Even a small change (.1%) would be undetectable by other means, though should potentially affect radioactive decay by tiny increases in effective neutron density.
While spacetime density is a misnomer, ‘waves’ in spacetime itself should be corollary to the relativity equations, and being in the frame of reference would make them difficult to measure.
The quantum nature of such events would be interesting to theorize. Does quantum probability of neutron interaction increase or stay the same in such a state, when operating as a quantum wave event? Until detection (by decay or other means) it should remain independent of the framework until observation, at which point quantum collapse occurs. Given the nature of the spatial distances, there should be a tiny change in the amount of the weak and strong nuclear force… but at the same time the framework is also compressed or or expanded.
It opens up questions of quantum distances versus macrospatial distances, and if the framework is relative until observation, and how much energy such a wave would possess… and what might be capable of creating such. The only way to observe such would be to observe its effects at the macro level, by the interaction of particles, and then it would only have infinitesimal potential changes in observable phenomena. It would be an interesting mathematics concept, but likely without use for anything else, save for discussions of philosophy amongst graduate physics and mathematics majors.
But then… I admit ignorance on much of the subject.
Radioactive decay is NOT a constant. Russian work published in 1989 describes experiments including decay of Pu239 over long periods of time, Schnoll et al. The crucial fact is that the magnetic, gravitational and magnetic fields have been shown not to affect radioactive decay but no one has subjected it to variations in the electric field. It’s variations in the electric field which affect radiactive decay rates observed.
Leif,
Thank you for continuing to stimulate us on this fascinating story line by your tip/sources location of this topic.
Four things that immediately struck me with the WUWT “Solar flares are teleconnected to earthly radioactive decay” post a couple of days ago were:
1) the need before we go too far with this is an alternate technique verification of the reported 33 day variations in isotopic decay constants and replication of their experiments
2) why initially locking so much onto neutrinos as potential cause, maybe because this would have least impact on fundamentals of modern physics?
3) why initially locking onto the sun’s rotation as an originator of the mechanism (whatever it is, neutrinos, gravitons or “X”)? Pulsing (with some feedbacks) also are know in nature to create recurring patterns, not just rotations.
4) the potential for much longer variations in the isotopic decay contants also exist, so this should be part of the critique of the original findings of 33 day variations
But, thank you for being circumspect on the findings. It seems what is needed is not to get the cart too far before the horse and verify critically the initial findings broadly.
John
This definately requires a Willis Logic approach !
Go Willis.
Moderator I think my previous post was snagged, had two long links.
Glen Shevlin says:
August 27, 2010 at 6:27 am
it is entirly possible that they have found something revolutionary, and it is equally possible that they found an anomally in data due to something outside their control . The process now is to have the data and methodology examined for flaws by anybody with an interest in it. If the data and results stand up we have new science and probably a trip to Sweden.
In scientific disciplines where experiments can be done, the method is to repeat the experiment, not to analyze the same data to death. This experiment can be done, it might take years, but it can be done, and should be done. It is impossible to gauge whether such small effects are instrumental artifacts of data being used by other people than the data gatherers themselves.
And of course, if you recall, the mechanism the destroyed the Earth in the (silly) movie, 2012, was a change in the way neutrinos behaved……
Whatever the substance of the arguments, you gotta love what Sullivan says: “…Data is data. That is the final arbiter…..”
Seems that is the essential mission statement of WUWT as a blog: without quality data there is no quality science. AGW is not based on quality data, and it is a travesty.
“”” Louis Hissink says:
August 27, 2010 at 7:08 am
Radioactive decay is NOT a constant. Russian work published in 1989 describes experiments including decay of Pu239 over long periods of time, Schnoll et al. The crucial fact is that the magnetic, gravitational and magnetic fields have been shown not to affect radioactive decay but no one has subjected it to variations in the electric field. It’s variations in the electric field which affect radiactive decay rates observed. “””
Well the problem with ascribing things to electric fields; such as the medical effects of power lines for example, is that you can calculate the energy density in an electric field; and in the case of the power line chemistry; somebody who did such a calculation said the energy density at the organic molecular size level was 27 orders of magnitude too low to influence any chemical bonds.
So now you zoom on in to the dimensions of the atomic nucleus; and any conceivable electric field we have observed around the laboratory would hardly seem to be noticeable to a nucleus.
So I don’t think any Classical Physics could be involved; presuming that the data check out and the decay variation is proved to be correct; whatever the presently unknown cause.
Thanks to Leif for pointing out the tortured path that mere photons have to endure to escape the optical inhomogeneity of the sun; while neutrinos evidently simply ask: “What sun ? I don’t see no stinkin’ sun !”
The Total Idiot says:
August 27, 2010 at 6:54 am
Evidently there is a need of a much more simple explanation. A unified field theory is needed…or perhaps it is out there in the books and we reject it because of prejudice.
There are general lwas we chose to ignore them.
I hope this proposed phenomenon gets a good scientific workout. Are data & methods being released? Is there a cogent plan to determine how widespread this phenomenon is? Every scientist knows this is the way to do things, and, it would make a nice contrast to warmist science that WUWT opposes.
Radioactive decay has statistical properties that are stationary, probably, and we can speak of a decay constant that is well defined for a large population of radioactive species, but it isn’t really constant. For each atom it is either 1 or 0 or decay or not, which seems difficult to describe as constant.
Statistical variation is a source of all sorts of “signals” that really aren’t there–possibly cold fusion of the Fleschman/Pons variety fits this idea.
Well, neutrinos are produced by radioactive decay. Could a radioactive decay process be reversed by adding a neutrino of the right type at the right time? Feynman diagrams posit reversibility in time, so maybe it is possible.
Still, the data need to be looked at very closely for spurious effects.
This reminds me of a variation on Murphy’s Law: “Variables won’t and Constants aren’t”.
This is a true science controversy-like a chess game. The best strategy and tactics
and- theory wins.
I’m still waiting for the response from the Melvin Dumar Cold Fusion Laboratory at the University of Utah.
But, Sullivan says, “they’re people 30 years later [studying] equipment they weren’t running. I don’t think they rule it out.”
I agree with that, however it also provides enough of a mystery for someone to find funding to replicate/verify their findings with a real experiment. It shouldn’t be difficult, we’ve already got neutrino detectors spread around the world. It wouldn’t be difficult to create a radioactive decay monitoring experiment on the surface above such a detector.
The Purdue-Stanford team cites an example of a 2006 solar flare, saying that they saw a dip in decay rates in a manganese isotope before the occurrence that lasted until after it was gone.
This also didn’t sit well with me. Neutrinos are supposed to come straight from the solar core uninterrupted. Solar flares are surface phenomena of charged matter interacting with magnetic fields in highly unstable states. The idea that they interact in some fashion seems a stretch.
If it were true, the idea would represent a huge jump in neutrino physics.
Also true, and also exciting.
Forgive my ignorance, but is the change in decay rate of an element really significant? Surely it would be so minute as to be only worthy of study for the sake of study. (I stand by trembling with my hard hat pulled right down!)
Photons are easily created (emitted) and destroyed (absorbed). Any given photon doesn’t survive from the core to the outside; it survives only a tiny distance in the dense inner sun before being absorbed. Of course, the particle absorbing it is excited to a higher energy level & will quickly emit a new photon. The 200k yr period is the time required for the photon “energy” to escape.
I would highly recommend “The Heretic’s Guide to Modern Physics”
Link here
http://www.wbabin.net/ppreww.htm
I series of articles from the 1980’s by a professional practicising physicist, W A Scott Murray, rather than an academic physicist, printed in an esteemed UK magazine Wireles World.
These articles are a must read, especially the comments about neutrinos.
“I think everybody would agree that atomic nuclei are quantized (type one), in that every nucleus is constructed out of a definite number of discrete particles, protons and neutrons, that can be recognised in the free state by their consistent properties and behaviour. But according to the new ideas the mechanics of everything small is also quantized (type two), and because the atomic nucleus is very much smaller than the complete atom, a fortiori should the mechanical energy and momentum within the nucleus be quantized. Yet the beta radiaiion, which is associated with the radioactive decay of one neutron into a proton inside the nucleus, apparently is not quantized. It was an article of the new faith that it should be quantized . . . “Therefore”, said the quantum theorists, “the conservation of energy must have failed (Niels Bohr); or, alternatively, the experimental evidence of the beta decay must be wrong”. Wolfgang Pauli saved the day, by postulating the existence of a completely unexpected neutrino or “small neutral particle” which had about the same mass as an electron but no electric charge. Such a particle, he suggested, would not show up in any ordinary particle counter or photograph. So: if one neutrino were to be emitted along with every radioactive beta electron, nobody would ever be able to detect the fact; but the invisible neutrino would carry away energy too, so that it and the beta electron, between them, could possess the quantized line spectrum of energy that the theory demanded although the visible beta electron did not. (The failure to quantize the sharing of this energy between the neutrino and the beta electron in fixed proportions was not explained).
Now if you feel this to be a somewhat implausible, ad hoc suggestion, designed to make the experimental facts agree with the theory and not far removed from a confidence trick, be sure I share your suspicions. The question before us is: Do we
believe in neutrinos? We would not be alone if we didn’t. Neutrinos are essential
to the modern quantum theory, however, and their existence is assumed as a matter
of course when describing nuclear reactions, yet not even their owners seem to
be very sure about them. When first. invented by Pauli they had about the same
mass as an electron (so as to share the missing energy equitably, on average); then suddenly it was proved that they could have no rest mass, but must be like some kind of non-radiant, indetectable photon. However, to make up for that they must be spinning – “but not mechanically, of course, since there is no structure there to spin”. More recently it has been declared that they probably do have rest mass but very, very little (actual amount unspecified), and that there must be at least four different kinds of them. It does not add up to a very convincing story.
From the theorists’ viewpoint the delightful thing about neutrinos is that they are virtually indetectable. Being so light, and electrically neutral, it is said that most of them fly right through the planet Earth, touching neither nucleus nor electron and
leaving no trace of their passage. (There is another logical inconsistency here too, but
we needn’t labour every one!). Very occasionally a particle counter registers inside
a 12ft-thick steel box near the target area of the big CERN accelerator at Geneva,
and this effect, like some others, is attributed to a neutrino collision because “it couldn’t be anything else”. Then one day the astrophysicists discovered that, according to current theory, the Sun should be pouring out neutrinos at a calculable,
fabulous rate; and accordingly an enormous neutrino detector was built in the United States especially to look for them, deep below ground in a diamond mine where undentified particles would be unlikely to be mistaken for neutrinos and confuse the results. That experiment was reported in 1976. It detected fewer than one-tenth of the neutrinos of solar origin that it was expected to detect, and maybe none; there is
no assurance that the very few nuclear reactions that it did detect were actually
due to neutrinos. ‘The astrophysicists have been sent away to do all their sums again.
But why should the poor astro-physicists take the blame for this negative result?
What if Pauli’s adventurous speculation should have been wrong, and his postulated
neutrino never existed after all? To the theorists such a thought really is unthinkable:
for if, after weighing the evidence, we were to determine that on balance of probabilities we did not believe in neutrinos, then we would be suggesting that the atomic nucleus might not be “quantized” (into discrete energy levels, type two). And that thought in its turn would strike at the roots of every modern theory about the physics of elementary particles.”
Enneagram says:
August 27, 2010 at 6:09 am
That model of the Sun seems obsolete
This is what our best data derived from helioseismology and neutrino-flux measurements show. Nothing obsolete here.
It definitely looks like it’s too early to make a call on this one right now. But my hope is that the paper is correct because I’ve always considered #1 above as an assumption of physics and not a fact. If it indeed shows to not be a fact, I’m fairly certain that most of what we think about the universe suddenly comes into question, because it relies too much on the assumption that so many things are “constant”.
Note that I’m not saying that these assumptions are bad, but to date they’re the best we’ve had to go on, and I love that a least someone (reputable) is willing to question them.
-Scott