Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Back in August 2010, WUWT ran an article wherein it was claimed that variations in the sun changed the rate of radioactive decay. This, of course, flew in the face of years and years of experimental evidence, starting with the Curies, that the rate of radioactive decay is constant, unaffected by pressure or temperature or anything else.
However, this claim that the sun could change radioactive decay rates was shortly challenged by a follow-up article at WUWT and then a second follow-up, both of which threw cold water on the idea.
Figure 1. Mass of the universe, by type. SOURCE
So I was interested to stumble across an announcement issued by Purdue University in August 2012, which strongly confirmed the reality of the phenomenon. Purdue has applied for a patent for the use of this effect as a means to supply advance warning of solar flares.
I found this most interesting, however, not because it affords a chance to have warning of another Carrington Event, although that would be great in itself. Instead, I found it interesting for a curious reason involving the mechanism whereby the sun is able to affect the rate of radioactive decay.
The thing I really like about the mechanism, about the way that the sun is able to influence the rate of radioactive decay, is that we don’t have any idea what it is or how it works.
Truly. Nobody has a clue. It was first noticed in 2006, and to date we have no idea how the sun does it. But Purdue says it clearly, repeatably, and demonstrably works. When the sun changes, radioactive substances all over the world change their rate of decay.
There have been years and years of attempts to see if we could artificially change the rate of radioactive decay. Obviously, if you could do that, it would be incredibly useful. But despite experiment after experiment, no one has ever discovered any combination of environmental variables that would change the rate of radioactive decay … until now, or so it seems at this time.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I don’t think that the sun rules the climate, and I’m not discussing the sun for that reason. I’m not one of the “It’s the sun, stupid” folks. I don’t think any of the forcings rules the climate—not the sun, not CO2, not methane, not volcanoes, none of them.
Instead, I think the earth’s temperature is set by interlocking homeostatic mechanisms. These natural and poorly studied emergent phenomena have laughed off the effects of huge meteor strikes, and long-term vulcanism, and a slow rise in the solar output, and kept the earth within a surprisingly narrow temperature range at all scales, from centuries to millions of years. We think nothing of the fact that next year won’t be much different from this year … and yet that stability, of plus or minus one tenth of a percent in the global average surface air temperature variation over the last century, is actually quite surprising and demands explanation.
So I’m not talking about the sun affecting the climate. I bring up this question of the sun affecting the rate of radioactive decay for one reason—to highlight just how much we don’t know about this marvelous, mysterious infinity that surrounds us. People talk about Trenberth’s famous “missing heat”, where he described one of the many parts of climate science that is poorly understood—energy that he says is incoming but can’t be found or accounted for.
But given that we seem to have misplaced both the dark energy and the dark matter that make up 96% of the mass of the universe … well, when you can’t find hide nor hair of almost everything the universe contains, that kinda makes not finding a few zetajoules in the climate system pale by comparison …
Let me take another example. In 2010 it was discovered that thunderstorms function as huge natural particle accelerators. Who knew? Here’s a description of the mechanism:
… when particularly intense lightning discharges in thunderstorms coincide with high-energy particles coming in from space (cosmic rays), nature provides the right conditions to form a giant particle accelerator above the thunderclouds.
The cosmic rays strip off electrons from air molecules and these electrons are accelerated upwards by the electric field of the lightning discharge. The free electrons and the lightning electric field then make up a natural particle accelerator.
The accelerated electrons then develop into a narrow particle beam which can propagate from the lowest level of the atmosphere (the troposphere), through the middle atmosphere and into near-Earth space, where the energetic electrons are trapped in the Earth’s radiation belt and can eventually cause problems for orbiting satellites.
I loved that last bit. Using a giant particle accelerator to affect a satellite? Good science fiction, but utterly outrageous that it’s actually happening. One way to recognize emergent behavior is that it is not readily predictable from a knowledge of the conditions. I’d say a thunderstorm suddenly forming a giant particle accelerator that can blast a satellite, well, that would definitely qualify as unexpected and not predictable … and here’s another one.
Thunderstorms give off burst of gamma rays. They found out by accident a few years ago when the gamma ray satellite “Fermi” looked at the Earth. Not only that, but the gamma rays in turn give off bursts of antimatter, which get shot off into outer space …
I’ve had no success trying to establish the amount of energy in one of these terrestrial gamma-ray bursts, no clue. But there are about 1,100 of them per day, and although they are short they are very energetic … so how much energy is lost to space that way?
I find both of these phenomena quite interesting in that they appear, at least, to be a way that the world loses energy to space that is not accounted for in the usual budget. Among other things, we’re blasting positrons into space … go figure.
Remember that the tropical thunderstorms are an emergent phenomenon. They are formed and cluster around the hot spots, so they are removing energy directly where it is needed. As a result, although it may not seem like a lot when it is averaged over the surface of the planet, in the area where it is happening it is very significant.
Here’s another way the planet loses energy that’s not in the conventional accounting. Consider lightning. My back of the envelope calculations show that at something like 5 billion joules per strike, it accounts for about 0.2 W/m2 of energy averaged over the earth’s surface. Some of that is released in the form of heat, and some in the form of light … and that’s where it gets interesting, because something like half of that light will be radiated upwards. You can see it clearly from the space station.
Now, very rough calculations I’m sure someone can improve upon, if light is half the lightning energy and heat is the rest, and half the light escapes to space, that’s less than a tenth of a W/m2 … but again, that’s averaged around the globe. The thunderstorms mostly occur in certain areas and certain times where they are needed to cool the surface. And in those areas and times, the loss of energy to space in the form of light could easily reach several watts per square metre.
I bring up all of this stuff because it’s unknown, it’s stuff we barely understand, or not even that much. But it’s hard for me to describe the point I’m trying to get across, so let me give a couple of quotes that may explain it. First, from the famous scientist J. B. S. Haldane:
Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
I find that greatly encouraging. It means there will always be new things to find out. Like the poet Robert Browning said, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp. Or what’s a meta phor?”
Then we have the famous scientist William Shakespeare, who might have been describing the sun affecting radioactive decay when he has Horatio say: :
HORATIO
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
HAMLET
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I suspect that eventually we’ll figure out just how it is that the sun is able to affect radioactivity, something that we thought could not be affected by anything. Of course, by then there will be some new phenomenon that’s just as mysterious.
And in the meantime, as we discover any new and fascinating thing about the climate, it seems to me that we should “as a stranger give it welcome”.
My point relates to the famous claim by Gro Harland Bruntland, the chief climate cheerleader for the IPCC, who said:
So what is it that is new today? What is new is that doubt has been eliminated. The report of the International Panel on Climate Change is clear. And so is the Stern report. It is irresponsible, reckless and deeply immoral to question the seriousness of the situation. The time for diagnosis is over. Now it is time to act (Brundtland 2007).
Well … no. Doubt has not been eliminated, nor will it ever be … and that’s great news.
And as for the consensus of more than 97% of scientists, you know, the ones who said that nothing could change the rate of radioactive decay? …
It’s doing about as well as consensus science ever does, meaning it’s right until it’s wrong, and in neither case does it affect the truth on the ground.
My best to all, keep up the questioning,
w.
Willis: I think you might find this paper “interesting”, and stimulating. I know Dr. Oriani. A distinguished Electrochemist, over 300 publications (back when it meant something, and peer review was helpful, not just enforcing of orthadoxy!)…a couple of Textbooks on electrochemistry and corrosion. Head of the “corrosion research department” (a sub-division of the ChemE department, at the U of MN for almost 30 years).
http://iccf9.global.tsinghua.edu.cn/lenr%20home%20page/acrobat/OrianiRAenergeticc.pdf
Suffice it to say, there is NO KNOWN source of Alpha bursts which would cause the tracks seen on his CR-39.
Hope you find that enlightening. Might even connect with the Antimatter and Gamma rays from T.Storms observations.
TomVonk says:
May 14, 2013 at 4:45 am
“That’s because like some posters already wrote, you are talking about things that are FAR above your head.”
Tom it appears that your brilliance equals your condescending attitude. The hypothesis is that brilliance minus condescending attitude equals less professional respect. In other words, you can disagree like a true professional or just be peevish expressing your exceptional knowledge.
I just finished the article, and all the comments up to this point.
Dudes! Thanks for the entertaining start to the day. Excuse me, now, while I take Willis’ advice and “go figure”.
izen says:
May 14, 2013 at 3:43 am
Indeed, see your wooful claims, viz:
And you know this how? How are you determining that e.g. the energy added is increasing, rather than claiming that the energy lost is increasing? Or perhaps in and out are staying the same, but the internal working of the system have shifted? You are just spouting comforting words, without anything underlying them but your woo …
Again, you don’t have a scrap of data to show this is true, to show that CO2 is the causative agent. And given the paltry showing of the last decade and a half of flat temperatures, you are fast losing even any correlation, much less causation.
Actually, our civilization has already survived many significant climate changes, and will no doubt survive many more. In particular, the BEST temperature data says the land temperature went up two degrees in the last two centuries … and that’s the amount that is supposed to be hugely dangerous.
So we’ve just survived what alarmists describe as huge climate change with basically positive results and no catastrophes, and thus your claim is very obviously falsified.
There’s some “new age woo” for you, izen … and it’s all yours.
w.
Max™ says:
May 14, 2013 at 4:27 am
Not sure what that means, but it seems clear that thunderstorms are indeed generating antimatter …
w.
You’ve missed several things out of your pie chart (helpfully labelled “figure 1”).
Pixie dust accounts for 3.4% of the mass of the universe.
Unicorn’s farts account for another 0.2%.
Let’s face it, the scientists don’t have much of a clue what’s going on. Theory and observation don’t match up. So the answer, at the moment, is that the observations must be wrong. So there’s lots of dark, invisible stuff theorised to fill up the gap.
When it comes to astrophysics, I don’t really care that they talk cr*p. I don’t really care that they drip hubris. It doesn’t really cost me. Unfortunately, this kind of egoistic make-believe has transferred to a branch of science that demands changes to my life-style.
“It’s doing about as well as consensus science ever does, meaning it’s right until it’s wrong, and in neither case does it affect the truth on the ground.”
Well, Willis, science is not the search for the truth about nature; it is the attempt to interpret nature. Science, then, is a collection of interpretations, not the reality itself. If you look back in the textbooks 125 years (I have to some extent), you will find that the certainty/consensus then was every bit as high as it is now. That was, after all, the period when a US Congressman wanted to eliminate the US Patent Office because everything that needed inventing had already been invented. Brain dead? Certainly. We now know that a VERY sizable portion of what the interpretations 125 years ago were wrong.
It is the certainty about us knowing all the Big Stuff – thinking that pervades science today – that is a claim by scientists that is as wrong as 125 years ago, and as wrong as religious ideas were all along.
The framework of Gradualism/Uniformitarianism is pervasive in science today. Yet 30 years ago paleontologist Stephen J Gould had to address the fact that the vast majority of evolution occurred during momentary surges such as the Cambrian Explosion. In between the explosions of species almost nothing happened. The evidence on the ground conflicted with Darwinian evolution almost before Darwin had personally evolved into ashes and dust. The Gradualism had to be “adjusted”, and Gould called the adjustment “Punctuated Equilibrium” (PE). It meant that Gradualism is the normal static state, but when change comes it comes with a bang.
Many biologists and paleontologists still adhere to the pre-PE viewpoint, even though there is much evidence arguing against them. They still try to use what I call a “paradigm crowbar” to fit the inconvenient facts into Gradualism.
Similarly, the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (referred to as the YDB, for YD boundary, which is considered to be the very beginning of the Holocene, the present geological age) is a punctuation in both natural history and the history of man, if found to be true (which seems to be increasingly probable). The YDB interprets the evidence to read that at about 12,900 years ago a large comet or meteor impacted in North America, likely on top of the Laurentian Ice Sheet, and causing an extinction event of both Clovis Man and 33 types of megafauna in North America, including the mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers.
The YDB event was not something anyone went out to find; it just fell out from of the evidence. The lead author of the YDB is nuclear scientist Rick Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, wasn’t looking for an impact event, but was only trying to explain some weird variations (non constants, btw) in the “constant” value of C14 decay. He ended up looking along two avenues: supernovas and impact events, both of which are known to affect radioactive decay. Upon recruiting other scientists from other disciplines, they found enough evidence to conclude that a YDB event was likely, and then went out to find out what further evidence could be found. They found in the sediments – right at the point where they suspected something happened – a previously ignored “black mat” layer in the sediments. The black mat has since become a notorious battleground between Gradualist thinkers on one side and what must be called Catastrophsists or Punctualists on the other side. The black mat showed spikes in what are normally seen as impact indicators – hexagonal nanodiamonds, He3, Iridium. carbon spherules, Platinum family elements, and more.
It is ironic that the black mat has become a battleground, because a similar (and the only other) layer, one with elevated levels of Iridium, was determined to be strong evidence for the dinosaur killer comet/meteor of 65 million years ago. One would have thought they would have noticed the black mat higher up, somewhere in the world, and begun to ask, “Does this one also indicate an impact event?”
Literally, the “truth on the ground” led some researchers to a new interpretation, one that was not even on the horizon 15 years ago. Even when the evidence is right under our noses and – literally – IN the ground, it can be overlooked by researchers who are lacking the imagination or perspective that might raise an eyebrow.
Science keeps finding reasons for punctualizing evolution and Gradualism in general. This makes Gradualism a good science for static periods but a poor interpretation for big events.
It also makes Gradualism itself a punctuated equilibrium. I was never a great fan of Stephen J Gould, but in recent years I’ve learned to appreciate him more and more.
BTW:
The YDB is still a controversial subject. So much so that Wikipedia has an editor who constantly erases any references to it that are not in keeping with HIS viewpoint. Wikipedia refuses to do anything about it. Anthony and others here will be familiar with that sort of bias at Wikipedia. The YDB will remain a controversial subject until a crater is found – which may be impossible because of the miles-thick ice sheets that covered N.A. and was likely where the impact occurred. Yet, independent researchers continue to find large amounts of supporting evidence/data. The skeptics on that “catastrophic” subject are – in an ironic reversal – are the consensus folks.
Steve Garcia
P.S. IMHO, the principle of Punctuated Equilibrium will one day become the overarching paradigm in all of the natural sciences, one that says that while Gradualism rules for vast tracts of time, events DO happen that change many things, and then Gradualism rules again for another vast tract of time – but with many things changed. Perhaps, at that time, when a punctuation is proposed the skepticism will be less intransigent.
BTW, What We Don’t Know – that is the most fun of anything in science. A Puzzle to solve! What could be more exciting!
Steve Garcia
We had a long thread about “Thunderstorms generating antimatter” some long time ago. I don’t know that anyone ever answered my question at that time, but I’ll ask it again.
There is bound to be some background level of matter/antimatter annihilation around us all the time. The annihilation of electrons with positrons produces the gamma rays, which are indirect evidence of antimatter. The measured level of gamma radiation coming from thunderstorms, at the time of our last thread, was very small. To prove it not being the result of background events one ought to monitor thunderstorm free regions of the atmosphere and show that the level of gamma ray production is much lower than that found in thunderstorms. Has anyone done this and published the results?
It seems far fetched to say that this natural particle accelerator can start down in the troposphere. Particle accelerators require very high vacuum in order to work. Without high vacuum the accelerated particles, ions and electrons, lose energy repeatedly and rapidly in collisions with nearby particles. What results is something that must appear a lot like–lightning. Maybe it is lightning. At any rate it is a lousy accelerator that operates in the normal vacuum found even as high as the mesosphere.
TomVonk says:
May 14, 2013 at 4:45 am
You know, Tom, I didn’t read one word further than that. That kind of arrogance and puffed-up self-importance goes straight in the trash in my world.
It might be true that it’s FAR over my head, but when a gentleman like you comes along acting like that?
Directly into the circular file, I didn’t even read it.
You’re a smart guy, Tom, and I may be missing the scientific news of the century, but that’s OK—I’ll get it from someone else.
I’m happy to get schooled in any of this, and I make no bones about my lack of a proper education. I’m totally self-educated in science, other than Physics 101 and Chem 101 that I took 45 years ago.
But if you want your message to get across in this forum, let me suggest that you leave out the patronizing patriarchal insults.
Thanks,
w.
PS—After re-reading this, I thought “Maybe I’m being too hard on Tom”. So I went back and read your whole post. And after reading the whole post, I still didn’t find out the answer to the question that you think is so trivial …
So in short, you’re quite happy to abuse me for not knowing the answer to a question, but you didn’t answer it either. It was a simple question, too—how much energy is lost through the gamma-ray bursts and the resulting generation of antimatter?
Or for that matter, how much energy is lost by the natural particle accelerators blasting into the upper atmosphere and outwards?
Looks like my first inclination was the right one. I missed nothing by putting it into the circular file. You didn’t answer the question, and you find the Purdue results unbelievable … so?
I’m not claiming that the Purdue finding about the sun affecting radiation won’t be overturned, Tom, that’s the nature of science … but it won’t be overturned by your taking time out of your busy schedule to insult me, while not answering my question and providing nothing else to support your claim other than your incredulity.
Because in an incredible world where thunderstorms can form particle accelerators that blast clear to outer space, I fear that your incredulity doesn’t impress me much …
Johan i Kanada says:
May 14, 2013 at 4:59 am
I suggest you are misplacing your suggestion.
I am an amateur scientist, and quite proud of that. However, I am merely reporting the results of several years of work by the scientists at Purdue. If you have a beef with their claims and ideas, you should take it up with them.
Please report back their response to your claim that they are “amateurs”, I’m interested to see what they might say.
w.
Simply put, Willis, if a photon produces antimatter, it had to have at least as much energy as the mass of an electron plus a positron, which sets a lower bound for the energy output of this phenomenon.
I gotta agree with the general mood about the electric universe junk showing up, only a matter of time before that starts devolving into full on anti-relativity bs.
>.>
Magnetism is an exchange of virtual photons, photons have momentum, add momentum to one side of an object, take it away from the other, what happens?
When scientists use the term “theory”, they mean “an explanation of some phenomenon which has survived rigorous experimental testing without falsification”, not “some random stuff I thought sounded right”, as it is so often used elsewhere.
General Relativity is a framework which provides mathematical support, predictive power, and experimentally testable concepts. It has been tested in numerous fashions for most of the last century, it has yet to be falsified, so we say that it is a successful theory of gravity.
Similarly with Quantum Electrodynamics and more and more so with Quantum Chromodynamics, both of which deal with interactions within what is commonly known as the Standard Model of Particle Physics, of which we recently had yet another experimental test of a prediction.
The finding of a particle fitting the properties and mass of the Higgs was boring for many, yet another confirmation of a very successful theory, but also a blow to those hoping for some exciting signs of new physics to investigate and discover. They may yet be there to find, but opening that last door to find a well made bed with a well behaved Higgs snoozing away means we’ll have to work that much harder to knock down a wall and make a new door or something.
Walking in on a Higgs being strangled by supersymmetric particles, now THAT would be exciting!
Max says:
> Magnetism is an exchange of virtual photons, photons have momentum, add momentum to one side of an object, take it away from the other, what happens?
>
> When scientists use the term “theory”, they mean “an explanation of some phenomenon which has survived rigorous experimental testing without falsification”, not “some random stuff I thought sounded right”, as it is so often used elsewhere.
Priceless. Do you truly fail to see how ridiculous this sounds? Virtual photons are suddenly real, have momentum, and explain magnetism. Cool. Everything you really wanted to know about magnetism.
re Ken wotsisname and Izen…………………….BESIDE THE FREACKING POINT!
If you actually READ the article, you’ll see that whether the phenomenon occurs or not is utterly beside the point being made.
All the same, this underlines my view that the better illustration of the fallacy of validity by consensus in science is that of Semmelweis. No scientist today can deny he was right. But almost every scientist in his lifetime did deny he was right, ultimately leading to his incarceration in a looney bin. Moreover Semmelweiss was not right by chance, but because he tested his hypothesis with large scale experiments priducing unequivocal data which the consensus crowd chose simply to ignore because it did not suit them. Ultimately, they didnt want to make the effort of washing their hands before clinical procedures. Untold numbers died as a result. This consensus persisted for many years.
Coming on here whining like little dweebs about “kwank thwience” wont change history.
Johan i Kanada says:
May 14, 2013 at 4:59 am
Johan, in case you want to contact these “amateurs” and set them straight, here are their names from the Purdue press release:
Or you and Tom Vonk could express your disdain directly to the journal involved, Astroparticle Physics, you can tell them they are amateurs and he can explain how it’s FAR above their heads …
Finally, let me remind people why I am reporting this finding. It’s not because I “believe” it—clearly it is tentative and it might be overturned tomorrow. That’s how science works.
I brought it up for another reason. From my head post:
w.
Max™ says:
May 14, 2013 at 10:38 am
Simply put, Max, that’s the second time you haven’t answered the question—how much energy is released in a terrestrial gamma-ray burst? Less posturing and more answers, please.
Perhaps if you were to quote or otherwise specify what you are vaguely referring to as “electric universe junk”, the rest of us could understand what you are mumbling about. Until then, it’s just hand-waving.
I’ve reported on three different phenomena, all of which (as far as I can tell) are real—an effect of the sun on radioactive decay rates, the formation of natural particle accelerators by thunderstorms, and the production of antimatter by gamma-ray bursts. I have no idea if you are talking about any one of these, all of them, or something else entirely.
Finally, the climate has a large and very poorly understood electrical component, particularly involving thunderstorms. Handwaving away the effect of electricity when the subject is thunderstorms? Sorry, that won’t wash even if you call it names like “electric universe junk”. For example, it has recently been shown that many of the small particles carried aloft by thunderstorms are moved by the electric field in addition to the ascending air, and thus reach much higher altitudes than they would without it … and that is not “electric universe junk”, it’s essential to understanding how the climate works.
w.
Brilliant TomVonk: This is not an article about how much we know, but about how much we don’t know. I agree with you that a radioactive decay – described as a quantum tunneling effect – should happen at a constant rate, determined only by laws of quantum physics. That is, assuming that a particle in a potential well does not interact with anything. Is this always the case?
We assume that billions of neutrinos are constantly bombarding us, and also nuclei of beta-radioactive elements. Very little is known about neutrino interactions – or neutrinos themselves. For almost all we know the neutrino mass may be zero; the simplest way to explain “neutrino oscillation” is to postulate that it is not zero.
Can you guarantee that the rate of beta decay must be constant in this real world?
NotARealClimateScientist says:
May 14, 2013 at 9:23 am
@Vince
“Now imagine the space traveller has reached his destination and stops before turning around.”
“It is important to realise that gravity and acceleration is not needed…”
How does one stop and turn around without acceleration?
======================================================
Well yes, as is often the case in flying out a reply on a blog, words are not carefully enough thought through.
What I am trying to say, is that one does not need to involve acceleration into any equations to understand time dilation, which can be deduced from special relativity alone.
I agree entirely – it is the body that has undergone acceleration that experiences time dilation. What I was getting at, was the post by Fred Berple who appeared to be implying that because the earth bound twin also undergoes an acceleration due to gravity, then there should be no way of distinguishing which twin undergoes time dilation (if I have misunderstood Fred, my apologies).
I was trying to convey to the reader, how symmetry is broken in this twin paradox. And it is because when the space traveler stops, they do not both see each others clocks change tick rates at the same time. The one who stops sees his twin’s clock stop immediately, but the one who does not stop (ie earth bound), does not see the twins clock change until the light has traveled that distance to reach him.
Regards
VC
The thing I really like about the mechanism, about the way that the sun is able to influence the rate of radioactive decay, is that we don’t have any idea what it is or how it works.
Very good.
Lance Wallace,
I am glad you liked Simon’s talk. I am not sure whether he is happy or frustrated, but I know he finds satisfaction in having proved to himself that those utterly bizarre results were not his errors. He just tried to be a good student, but failed: good students do what they are told and ignore that insignificant fluff. His own mentor’s advice was: “Make fewer measurements, and you’ll have fewer problems!”
> His cycles seem to be more related to the sidereal day (23 h 56 m) than the solar day, which causes him to think of the space-time continuum being anisotropic, rather than thinking of purely solar influence.
In fact, he sees both, as well as many longer periods. He told me that in some lab set-ups, sunrise or moonrise make the instruments go mad, like in a quake. So will sunset, moonset or new moon. Historically, the sidereal day period was not the first to be discovered. They found it fairly recently when they started doing massive experiments with fast automated sampling.
> I wonder if the Jenkins-Sturrock group can measure precisely enough to differentiate a 24-h day from a 23 h 56 m day.
I can’t see why not, unless they use so little radioactive material that their events become too rare. On the surface of it, it looks like one of Simon’s early experiments. They have either not heard of him or simply wanted an independent verification.
I have just found that a translated version of Simon’s book has just been published last year. The translation was done by non-specialists, so bits of it may sound strange, but it’s great that it exists the way it is:
http://ptep-online.com/index_files/books_files/shnoll2012.pdf
Chapters 5 and 6 show the data for circadian periods, but you may need to glance at the leading chapters to understand the meaning of those graphs.
When Feynman made the flat, terse pronouncement that “the key to science” is that when theory conflicts with observation, “it’s wrong” (wrong being the theory), he was obviously doing so for the dramatic effect he so loved. To think that Richard Feynman, in actual practice, would have neglected A & B before going on to C is naive in the extreme; ditto for Popper and his rule of falsification. Also, I don’t see why it should be necessary to have a “viable replacement” theory before tossing a shaky theory.
Tom Vonks’ assertion that
while omitting the obvious first possibility – that creditable researchers discovered a real phenomena which is driven by the sun – is bizarre.
Lance Wallace: The fact that all these articles seem to have the same three authors (Jenkins, Fischbach, Sturrock) reminds me a bit of Fleischman and Pons.
Clearly, it isn’t a reliable phenomenon until other labs have shown it so. However, the fact that no mechanism is known is not a compelling argument. Lots of relationships have been discovered prior to their mechanisms being discovered: think how much time passed before there was an adequate explanation of radioactive decay itself. Even now the understanding is insufficient to predict when a particular atom will decay.
It is a widely believed myth that nuclear decay rates are not affected by anything. The atom bomb is the most obvious proof that the rate can be accelerated quite dramatically. Nuclear reactors are a common and more mild example.
johnmarshall says:
May 14, 2013 at 2:20 am
If the sun does not ”rule” climate then where does the heat come from to run climate. It may not be the major driver, there are clearly minor drivers not from the sun, but it the only source of heat. Also since we still do not understand all solar output influences on the climate how can you make that statement?
Perhaps radioactive decay can be changed by solar nutrino output and varying this changes the decay rates. First catch your nutrino.
—————————————————————-
This. Solar neutrino rates appear to be variable. Neutrinos ONLY interact via the weak force. Radioactive decay is via the weak force.
Willis:
A few years ago, a physicist friend told me that the latest thinking on lightning is that it is actually facilitated by cosmic rays: Air is a very good insulator, so much so that physicists struggled for quite a while to develop a reasonable theory for lightning propagation, until the idea was hit upon that cosmic rays actually create a path of highly conductive ionized air (and since cosmic rays branch out endlessly through thousands of nth-order collisions, lightning will similarly branch and re-branch). Could the same cosmic ray that creates a path for the lightning also provide the free electrons for the natural particle accelerator(and why would they be accelerated just upward?)?
Thanks Willis, another delightful peer into our ignorance.
Your postings serve beautifully to highlight the human choice of wonder versus authority.
I’m guessing that the more rigid a persons reality, the less likely they are comfortable with accepting their/our ignorance.
I am fascinated by the possibilities implied, energies unknown roiling the atmosphere.
Energy interactions between the orbs.
The dynamics of a water world shall continue to reward inquiring minds.