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.”
The technical side of this is fascinating but I was also struck by the qoute from Dr. Sullivan
“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.”
For me, the last sentence highlights a basic human instinct – confirmation bias. Something we see in climate science, archaeology, ecology, etc all to often. The advantage that physicists have, is a very robust version of “well established” (altough one could argue this about string theory and some other modern advances that are hard to test with experimentation). It is only because such care has been taken in building up the established picture for physics, that this system is valid. When “well established” is unproven theory, or worse dogma, the warm fuzzy we get when a new observation matches our belief is false comfort.
Archaeology offers some fascinating perspectives on confirmation bias. I would suggest the search for the “missing link” in the nineteenth and early 20th century has many similarities to the evolution of AGW “science”. Piltdown mann 🙂 for example.
Dollars to donuts this will turn out to be nothing. Most ground-breaking, revolutionary studies that overturn everything we know turn out to be wrong.
It does not appear the change in decay rates on the earth is due to a particle emission from the sun, as there is a significant lag time as the forcing mechanism builds up. A second logical argument against a particle cause is there is no known particle that can affect both beta and alpha emission.
It appears what is causing the changes in decay ratios (based on something that can affect both alpha and beta emission and that has a lag time) is modulation to a significant solar scale field. (See link below.)
There are peculiar unexplained terrestrial observations – for example unexplained cyclic large geomagnetic field inclination and intensity changes called archeomagnetic jerks (periodicity around 200 years), large numbers of burn marks on the surface of the earth with the same data of formation (At 12,300 BP and at around 30,000 BP), geologically simultaneous volcanic eruptions from volcaneos that are in the same region but have separate magma chambers, and so on, – that can provide support for a scalar field with a normal state and with an interruption that leads to discharge that affects the earth and the other planets in the solar system. I have been looking at the origin and evolution of stellar magnetic fields as well as the formation of large stars. There are a large number of anomalous observations that appear to be related to what is causing these observations.
Correlations Between Nuclear Decay Rates and Earth-Sun Distance http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3283
Evidence for Correlations Between Nuclear Decay Rates and Earth-Sun Distance
Unexplained periodic fluctuations in the decay rates of Si-32 and Ra-226 have been reported by groups at Brookhaven National Laboratory (Si-32), and at the Physikalisch-Technische-Bundesandstalt in Germany (Ra-226). We show from an analysis of the raw data in these experiments that the observed fluctuations are strongly correlated in time, not only with each other, but also with the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Some implications of these results are also discussed, including the suggestion that discrepancies in published half-life determinations for these and other nuclides may be attributable in part to differences in solar activity during the course of the various experiments, or to seasonal variations in fundamental constants.
The preceding considerations, along with the correlations evident in Fig. 4, suggest that the time-dependence of the 32Si/36Cl ratio and the 226Ra decay rate are being modulated by an annually varying flux or field originating from the Sun, although they do not specify what this flux or field might be. The fact that the two decay processes are very different (alpha decay for 226Ra and beta decay for 32Si) would seem to preclude a common mechanism for both.
However, recent work by Barrow and Shaw [12, 13] provides an example of a type of theory in which the Sun could affect both the alpha- and beta-decay rates of terrestrial nuclei. In their theory, the Sun produces a scalar field _ which would modulate the terrestrial value of the electromagnetic fine structure constant _EM.
I am not a physicist but that does not mean not interested. This is fascinating work that raises questions. Those questions need to be resolved. One thing that needs to be resolved is how constant is constant? The only constant in physics, I am aware of, that has no variation or uncertainty, is the speed of light and that is by definition. I suspect this phenomena has more to do with definitions of precision and accuracy then anything else. One other thought, almost all natural phenomena I can think of can be expressed or is expressed in or as a wave form. It will be interesting to watch as the physicists try and unravel what they have observed.
[snip] These findings are clearly robust – and the effect may be worse than first thought. We need a UN-sponsored panel to be set up so that the general public can be properly advised and a neutrino trading scheme should be set up forthwith!
It seems to me this effect would have been seen before in nuclear power reactors unless it is sensitive to specific nuclei.
A contrary view can be found in:
“Evidence against correlations between nuclear decay rates and Earth–Sun distance”
Eric B. Norman a,b,c,*, Edgardo Browne c, Howard A. Shugart d, Tenzing H. Joshi a, Richard B. Firestone
http://donuts.berkeley.edu/papers/EarthSun.pdf
Evidently, the effect mentioned in the 2010 paper was originally reported in 2008, which explains the timing of this Oct 2009 article.
Mac is right. This could be a tipping point in the debate of the alleged existence of the Neutrino. On a more immediate level, if the rate of radioactive decay is not a constant, what will this do to historical dates produced by the likes of radioactive carbon?
This is a link to the paper that discusses the archeomagnetic jerks. The archeomagnetic jerk affects planetary climate by changing the inclination and intensity of the geomagnetic field. When the geomagnetic field is strongly inclined as compared to the rotational axis of the planet, higher rates and greater intensity of GCR strikes lower latitudes of the planet. (If the geomagnetic field’s axis and the rotational field are aligned, the GCR particles are deflected from striking low latitude regions on the planet.) Over time the geomagnetic field’s axis tries to return to alignment with the planet’s rotational axis however there is a delay as the core geomagnetic field has a large time constant.
This mechanism (abrupt changes to the geomagnetic’s field inclination) explains the puzzling regional difference in climate changes that are observed to have occurred, where regions at similar latitudes but different longitudes on the same hemisphere, experience different amounts of climate change during the cyclic abrupt climate events in the geological past.
Where the strikes occur on the planet and hence how the strikes affects the geomagnetic field depends on the planet’s inclination at the time of the event, the pole of the planet that is pointing towards the sun at the time of the event (which determines whether the strike is in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere), and other terrestrial factors such as the extent and location on the surface of insulating ice sheets.
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/BardPapers/responseCourtillotEPSL07.pdf
Response to Comment on “Are there connections between Earth’s magnetic field and climate?, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 253, 328–339, 2007” by Bard, E., and Delaygue, M., Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., in press, 2007
Also, we wish to recall that evidence of a correlation between archeomagnetic jerks and cooling events (in a region extending from the eastern North Atlantic to the Middle East) now covers a period of 5 millenia and involves 10 events (see f.i. Figure 1 of Gallet and Genevey, 2007). The climatic record uses a combination of results from Bond et al (2001), history of Swiss glaciers (Holzhauser et al, 2005) and historical accounts reviewed by Le Roy Ladurie (2004). Recent high-resolution paleomagnetic records (e.g. Snowball and Sandgren, 2004; St-Onge et al., 2003) and global geomagnetic field modeling (Korte and Constable, 2006) support the idea that part of the centennial-scale fluctuations in 14C production may have been influenced by previously unmodeled rapid dipole field variations. In any case, the relationship between climate, the Sun and the geomagnetic field could be more complex than previously imagined. And the previous points allow the possibility for some connection between the geomagnetic field and climate over these time scales.
Even if it’s not neutrinos upsetting the decay, it’s still interesting. If it’s an artifact of the measurments, that’s still interesting. That radioactive decay measuring might be affected by the seasons is interesting, though in a different way.
Anthony —
You and the WUWT commenters have a golden opportunity to do real science. Your focus up to now has been on GW and weather, but the interest in the Sun evident here indicates that it’s at worst related.
What’s needed to support this hypothesis is a large number of readings taken over as large as possible an area for the maximum possible length of time, with as much quality control as possible.
How much would it cost to develop a device that contained a tiny sample of some radioactive isotope, a detector (many plastics scintillate, and teeny scintillator crystals are available), and a USB interface, together with software to log readings of activity and upload them to a server at regular intervals? Regulations for the handling of active isotopes are such that it would actually be cheaper to make something that couldn’t be tampered with than otherwise and get regulatory approval. Purchasers could then register with neutrinos@home and allow concentration of the readings in a central database.
The result, if it took off the way your climate widget did, would collect a lot of data with good traceability and consistency, and based on observation there would be no shortage of volunteers to analyze the data collected.
Regards,
Ric
The first thing which comes to my mind as to a physical reason for this finding, presuming it doesn’t just turn out to be a spurious correlation, can be illustrated by looking at photons, which someone mentioned above. Photons of a particular wavelength are absorbed with a likelihood which can be calculated with great accuracy (at least in some cases). But as photons stream by an atom they may still have effects aside from absorption. Since it’s been over 40 years since I studied advanced physics, I’ve long since forgotten the names of any such effects, but probably somebody else here knows them. In the same way, it might be possible that a second order effect of neutrinos (or neutrino density) could cause a minor change in decay rates of some isotopes. And this might vary depending on which sort of neutrino we’re talking about. Things like neutrino mass, etc. would also enter into the picture. It’d be nice if some who is up on the subject would chime in (unless, of course, he or she is busy writing the article which might earn a trip to Oslo.)
If this study has validity and radioactive decay rates vary via neutrinos fluctuations from the Sun, then assumptions about the age of the Earth and other geologic time measurements (such as various ages such as the Permian) are seriously called into question.
It seems the more Science learns about various physical dynamics & relationships, the more various assumptions, which Science has took for granted, are called into question.
Ian E says:
August 27, 2010 at 9:15 am
[snip] These findings are clearly robust – and the effect may be worse than first thought. We need a UN-sponsored panel to be set up so that the general public can be properly advised and a neutrino trading scheme should be set up forthwith!
lol, coffee out nose on keyboard
Mac says:
August 27, 2010 at 8:57 am
“I would highly recommend “The Heretic’s Guide to Modern Physics”
Link here
http://www.wbabin.net/ppreww.htm”
Many thanks for this link, Mac. I have started reading the series “A heretic’s guide to modern physics” and am finding it most interesting. I recommend it to everyone here.
James F. Evans says:
August 27, 2010 at 10:10 am
If this study has validity and radioactive decay rates vary via neutrinos fluctuations from the Sun, then assumptions about the age of the Earth and other geologic time measurements (such as various ages such as the Permian) are seriously called into question.
What’s .2% of 4.5 billion years? Might change dating of dinosaurs by 100 yrs or so, well within the accepted deviation.
Read João Magueijo’s book on FTL, (Faster Than Light). There have been several theories that light speed is, has not been, constant since the Big Bang, if there was one, that is. I have one of his books and it is interesting while making no claims other than that it is a theory which if true would eliminate some of the problems with presently accepted theory, like inflation. Energy density/level could have changed the speed of light over time is part of the theory.
I thought this was the money quote:
But apparently one study using 12 trees is good enough reason to regulate the global economy. Why can’t a climate scientist be more like a physicist? (Apologies to Lerner and Lowe)
Mac,
It makes a great story, only the quantum theory of the nucleus has been substantiated both theoretically and experimentally over hundreds if not thousands of experiments for decades.
Dennis Nikols, P. Geol. says: “The only constant in physics, I am aware of, that has no variation or uncertainty, is the speed of light and that is by definition.”
The constancy of the speed of light in a vacuum is not accomplished by definition. It is derived as a natural and necessary consequence of Maxwell’s electro-magnetic field equations and the Scientific Axiom. As its actual value is dependent of the field properties, it is as invariant as the field properties.
The Scientific Axiom, is, of course, a working assumption that cannot be proven, but has stood up to fairly rigorous test. Put colloquially it can be stated as: “It ain’t magic.”
Tim Clark presents Evans’ comment: “If this study has validity and radioactive decay rates vary via neutrinos fluctuations from the Sun, then assumptions about the age of the Earth and other geologic time measurements (such as various ages such as the Permian) are seriously called into question.”
And, Tim Clark responds: “What’s .2% of 4.5 billion years? Might change dating of dinosaurs by 100 yrs or so, well within the accepted deviation.”
Tim, first, alot of assumptions go into the 4.5 billion years hypothesis, and, remember, that’s all it is, a hypothesis.
Second, If you add up .2% into that 4.5 billion year hypothesis, it changes the numbers rather significantly, more than just a “100 yrs or so”.
Third, if, “this study has validity and radioactive decay rates vary via neutrinos fluctuations from the Sun (or some other potential physical mechanism)”, do we know that the radioactive decay rate doesn’t vary substantially more than just .2% when certain of physical parameters are met or changed?
Tim, I realize that pointing out assumptions (particularly assumptions taken for granted) can be wrong makes many uncomfortable, but that is what Science is all about — if advancing scientific understanding is the goal.
On the other hand, if protecting reputations and the assumptions that go with those reputations is what Science is all about then I understand and agree with your comment completely…
Merrick says:
August 27, 2010 at 10:37 am
“quantum theory … substantiated both theoretically and experimentally”
Agreed, but there are also small dangling questions. The Magnetic Vector Potential, which looks like a mathematical construct, but which appears to influence electron pairs in Josephson Junctions. Is there an unknown equivalent at the nuclear level? Not in my QM books, but in books about particle currents…
Transmutation was only as a result of decays, now it appears it’s controllable with replicated experiments world-wide. There are lots of things we don’t know about nuclear reactions, even more that we don’t know that we don’t know.
Michael Larkin says:
August 27, 2010 at 10:23 am
“I would highly recommend “The Heretic’s Guide to Modern Physics”
Link here
http://www.wbabin.net/ppreww.htm”
Thank you (and Mac) for this. I will be reading for some time to come.
.
It is legal to buy and possess uranium ore and can be bought at United Nuclear.
http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=2_4
I’m sure there are other sources. The low or medium active ores probably would be good enough for the experiment. There are also thorium ores. Both these have long half lives meaning the output will be fairly constant, barring other factors. Not sure about how to put the detector in a USB device. Scintillation detector sounds good, maybe with a solar cell chip to convert to electronic count?
James F. Evans says: “. . .do we know that the radioactive decay rate doesn’t vary substantially more than just .2% when certain of physical parameters are met or changed?”
Boom! BADDA Boom! BIG badda boom!