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Posted on 08/29/2008 9:29:09 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Interesting idea. However, I think, given the weight penalties and the lack of a demonstrable need to measure decay rates, that the instruments to measure it were probably not included. They may be able to measure the electrical output, but the change in decay rate requires quite a bit more finesse.
C14 ratios are decay related... but seeing as how we are looking at very long half life (~5730 years), and the fact that the Earth's orbit is elliptical over a year's time, any changes in decay rate would tend to average out.
They have assumed to be constant... but if they aren't a lot of assumptions are going to have to be changed.
Consider, what if C14's half life of 5730 years were suddenly changed to 1000 years? All of the dating done with the assumption that every 5730 years there would be half the C14 there was before would be wrong and things dated with that technique would be far younger than assumed.
Or worst case scenario: Plutonium's 24,000 year half life is suddenly cut to 2,400 years and 100 (I think that's about the right ratio) times the number of Plutonium Atoms fission in an Atomic bomb... and the critical mass is suddenly 10 times smaller?
Can you say BOOM?
For every bomb in our inventory...
That would be bad.
I think I can understand that about the earth’s orbit.
Pretend we found a log on Mars; another on a moon of Saturn and another on . . . oh, in honor of the movie . . . one of the moons of Endor.
Is it now conceivable, or not, that the decay rates could be different for each location?
There are undoubtedly thermal and power measurements available. The real question is whether, after being digitized for downlink, they still have the granularity to check it. I think over a very long term, a difference could show up.
That might be the case. However, C14 dating has always been dependent on location and altitude of the original organic materials' growth. Some areas have higher C14 levels than others. C14 dating is only as accurate as its calibration through other dating methods such as dendrochronology can confirm its accuracy as you go back in time. Once you go beyond the confirmation of such other dating methods, C14 dating accuracy gets more and more to be educated guesswork. In some areas, we have overlapping growth records that can take us back up to 20,000 years. In other areas the confirming wood tree ring record simply does not go back that far.
However, this variability of accuracy is NOT based on changes in decay rates. Those are assumed to be the same whether the items to be tested are in Asia, Norway, or Egypt.
Wonder why that is...?
***So do I, is there something you are hinting at that I don’t know? Some smart aleck recently get banned?
Do you think they overlooked this thread? Maybe they’re boycotting it, or even boycotting Free Republic? I’ve been nose-deep into other stuff so I haven’t noticed the crevo theads lately.
So that makes it hard to explain the curious periodic variations in the decay rates of silicon-32 and radium-226....
Which suggests that the expectation of Newtonian physics that events in reality are fundamentally local is not correct, that local events can be affected by non-local causes that are not yet identified, let alone properly understood.
What a fascinating thread, Kevmo! We'll have to wait and see what develops. Thank you so much for the ping!
If this keeps up we’re going to need a new clock.
Likewise here, the nuclear decay rate changes are very small - something like 3% - and it cuts both ways. So even if the observation holds up, the effects are not enough to debunk the accepted age of the earth.
The Pioneer effect is another unexpected anomaly. All are very interesting and should be thoroughly investigated, but the effects of all them are quite small.
Still, it is an interesting observation and as you say, may have something to do with non-locality.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!
Have you looked at the Hoagland reported thing on von Vraun’s ‘50 year old secret’ and De Palma’s steel ball experiment with one ball spinning and one not—the spinning one going higher etc. than the non-spinning one?
HERE: http://www.enterprisemission.com/Von_Braun?.htm
On p 18 of 39 is the blue background gif of DePalma’s Spinning Ball Experiment. . . . wherein he put 2 identical 1” steel balls such as pin ball machines use . . . in 2 identical cups. Don’t recall all the details but essentially—one ball was in a cup affixed to a spinnable drill. The other wasn’t. After the spinning ball was up to a given number of rpm’s both balls were tossed equally into the air. The spinning ball rose significantly higher etc. as the graph shows from the strobe pics.
Thanks for the ping.
As Steve86 posted, “Someone else pointed out the phenomenon seems to have to do with rate of change in distance — not distance in itself.”
***That would mean that an object in orbit would see little effect (because its rate of change with respect to the sun tends to cancel out) whereas an object that continued to accelerate, such as an ionic propulsion scheme, would see a more enhanced effect. The easier way to test this would be to send some kind of probe into a decaying orbit around the sun, no propulsion required after it is placed.
Quix, thank you ever so much for the link! I’ll go check it out ASAP!
If that is the case, then it seems to me that the time problem comes to the fore here ("rate of change" cannot be understood without regard to time. And time itself is something that, arguably, is not sufficiently well understood by human observers at the present time).
Plus as wideminded has pointed out, the fine structure constant is given by electrical charge, Planck's constant, plus the speed of light. It is conventionally understood that both Plank's constant and the speed of light are universal constants in nature; that is, we expect their values never change.
But if the speed of light were seen to be not a fixed "speed limit of the universe," that would undermine relativity theory; and in so doing would challenge Einstein's claim (in his 1905 paper on special relativity) that the laws of the universe are exactly the same for all observers regardless of their "inertial frames," or relative spatiotemporal positions. Which insight is still regarded as a theory, not a law.
And if Planck's constant were not, er, an unvarying universal "constant," then that would undermine quantum theory as presently constituted, as well....
The observations in this article, and speculations as to their meaning, really do seem to presage an opening up of a whole new can of worms for physics.... They are truly radical ("radical" from the Greek root, radix, meaning "root" — here we go to the "root" of the physical problem, or try to.)
I don't know where any of this is going; but I'll certainly be paying attention to breaking developments....
It is just so fascinating, to watch science at work like this!
May God ever bless the scientists, and especially the physicists!
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