Nuclear Decay Earth Sun Distance

[Saul]

This is an interesting observation to explain. Nuclear decay rates change depending on the Earth's distance from the sun.

The logical conclusion is some solar parameter directly affects the Earth in a manner that affects nuclear decay rates.

It is interesting to note that there is a phase lag. That is to say there is a delay in the affect to reach peak and there is a delay in the affect to reach minimum. That observation supports the assertion that there is a build up and a build down associated with what every is causing what is observed. One hypothesis presented in the paper is that solar neutrinos somehow change nuclear decay rates. A problem with that hypothesis is that as neutrinos travel at the speed of light and do not build up or build down, there would be no delay if neutrinos were the cause. The neutrino hypothesis does not explain the phase lag.

Curiously the sun our nearest star is not understood. There are multiple sets of solar observations that do not have an explanation and that concern fundamental solar processes.

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.


This experiment, which extended over 15 years, overlapped in time with the BNL experiment for approximately 2 years, and exhibited annual fluctuations in the 226Ra data similar to those seen at BNL. Figure 3 exhibits the PTB data as a 5 point rolling average, and it is evident from the figure that the PTB data closely track the annual variation of 1/R2. The Pearson correlation coefficient r for the data in Fig. 3 is r=0.66 for N=1968 data points, corresponding to a formal probability of 2×10−246 that this correlation could arise from two data sets which were uncorrelated. As in the case of the BNL data, there is also a suggestion of a phase shift between 1/R2 and the PTB data (see below), although this phase shift appears to be smaller than for the BNL data.

 

[Vanadium 50]

This is old news.

Discussed https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=252518&".