The current best explanation is that there’s a cloud of thermal neutrinos that are held captive by the sun’s gravity and these are a large factor in beta decay probability. Moving a little farther away from the sun puts the earth in a thinner portion of the cloud and the rate decreases. I’m not sure I buy that because matter is almost completely transparent to neutrinos and if some undetected low energy neutrinos interact with matter many orders of magnitude more often than high energy neutrinos we should observe annual inconsistencies in all sorts of quantum and maybe even chemical processes. A low energy neutrino is more likely to interact with atomic nuclei just like low energy neutrons are much more likely than high energy neutrons. It’s just that I don’t understand why the neutrino effect would only show up in radioisotope beta-decay.

On the other hand, if isn’t a gravitationally constrained thermal neutrino cloud but some other kind of emission where the angle of exposure to the sun matters then there should be another sinusoidal annual cycle in the data out of sync with the distance from the sun. There’s also some mention that the decay rate changes during major solar flares too which also speaks against the thermal neutrino cloud hypothesis.

Your suggested relationship to something other than the distance seperating the earth ans sun is a point well taken. But it serves to point out the need to consider all of the factors that have a period related to the the revolution of the earth around the sun while trying to pin down the cause of the observations.

Stephen

You might try factoring in the tilt of the earth’s axis and latitude of the experiment. That’s an annual cycle out of phase with perihelion and aphelion.

I wonder if the cause may be be related to the motion of the earth relative to something else, say CMB radiation.

I think that having it reported as such a mystery in this pro-Darwinan website shows that this evidence is being noticed by the scientific community.

http://setterfield.org/000docs/accelanom.htm

http://setterfield.org/

I say “would have”… because, once I was exchanging emails with Sal on speed of light & radioactive decay rates. He sent me a link to Setterfield’s website. Before actually visiting this website, I had already hypothesized before reading about it, that..hey! the deep space probes might, in some way, provide clues on the speed of light slowing since they have been sent out. I was very delighted, that that just so happened to be a discovery that was made..and it so happened to be an article posted on Setterfield’s website.

The hypothesis was only documented in an email perhaps..but I think this may count, in some sense perhaps, another score for science with a YEC presupposition/worldview.

Thanks for bringing this article to our attention. And thanks for your open-minded take on how science should be discussed (also GilDodgen at #6–see further below).

I would extend that open-mindedness to the discussion of evolution. Thus I agree with jerry (#12) that even if mechanistic megaevolution is false, microevolution and even speciation through at least partly RV&NS mechanisms may be true, and there is no need to reflexively make the equation evolution=bad.

It is important to keep in mind what has been reasonably shown by the article and what has not. One thing has been reasonably conclusively demonstrated. Radioactive decay rates are not invariant. This has been known for k-capture for some time, and there are extremely minor effects noted for some alpha-decays, but in general for most decays the effect has been believed to be be insignificant. Now we are in posession of data which show systematic changes in the decay rate (or decay rate ratios) on the order of one part in 500. This blows out of the water the “law” of constant decay.

Furthermore, the decay is correlated with the distance from the earth to the sun, a physical effect completely inconsistent with the presumed local mechanism of previous violations of the “law” of constant decay. It shows rather conclusively that we really do not understand the mechanism of decay anywhere near as well as we thought we did. And we have no business ruling out a postulated accelerated decay event until we understand why such an accelerated decay is physically impossible. At present we do not have that understanding.

However, there are several problems with the data, some of which are not adequately addressed by the paper. Notice that what varied in both cases cited by the paper is not the absolute decay rate but rather the ratio of decays of one isotope to another. In one case it is the ratio of decay of 32Si (beta decay, half-life some 150 years) versus 36Cl (98% beta decay, 2% electron capture or positron decay, half-life 301 K years). In the other case, it is the ratio of decay of 228Rn (alpha decay, with a trace of 14C decay (!), half life 1600 years) versus 152 Europium (72% electron capture, 28% beta decay, half life 13.5 years). Thus it is not clear whether radium decay went up during certain periods, or europium decay went down, or a little of both, or whether they both went up but radium decay went up more, or they both went down but europium decay went down more. In order to build an accurate model, we need answers to such questions. Are the raw data available, and have they been analyzed with regard to this question?

Dave’s (#8) Voyager 1 data are fascinating in this regard. They suggest that we should be looking for faster europium decay further away from the sun rather than more rapid radium decay. However, there is one other piece of data that is pertinent here. The predictive model includes degradation of the performance of the thermocouple. Have such thermocouples been operated for extended times in the presence of 238Pu so that we know how close to accurate the degradation model is? Dave (#8) hinted that he would try to get back to us with it.

The article also mentioned another paper suggesting that solar flares could change the rate of decay. Do solar flares blow away cosmic rays, or increase the neutrino flux, or what? The fact is, all of a sudden our “knowledge” has been shown to be less than we thought it was, and we have to start over being much more careful in our assumptions.

One question that immediately comes up is, what about day-night variations? The nighttime earth is slightly further away from the sun, less exposed to solar influences, and more exposed to the rest of the galaxy. I know, having counted tritium-labeled material, that the effect is not large. But what about subtle effects?

And, Dave (#19), you are right; there are all kinds of practical possibilities if we can identify the reason for the change in radioactive rates.

One last thought for Gil (#6). You will be interested that your proposal has been formally made by Russell Humphreys in a book entitled Starlight and Time.

Here’s a thought I’ve been wanting to write down for a few days.

Say the effect is real and there’s some field or emission from the sun that serves as a throttle on radioactive decay rate.

Further say the field or emission can be economically reproduced artificially and focused on a nanogram scale fuel particle to increase the decay rate exponentially.

What you have then is essentially nanogram sized atom bombs.

What happens if you mix with it with a nanogram size bits of dueterium and tritium? Nanogram size hydrogen bombs – which essentially form the core of fusion reactors. Energy problem solved.

This is really, really interesting physics with great potential for practical application here if the effect is real.

Some interesting points about have been made by creationists here:
Creation Science

It’s interesting that people think they can find evidence either way because that means creationism is falsifiable. If you can disprove creationist hypotheses with science then it seems that it was part of the scientific process all along.

Creationism aside, theism has always been the foundation of science as we know it and there is evidence that it cannot be done away without science degenerating into irrational forms of pseudo-science. There is a difference between blindly seeking or imagining natural explanations no matter the evidence and seeking rational explanations based on the evidence.