[Kevmo]

Pinging some of the more knowledgeable and interesting Freepers who might be able to shed some light on this subject.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Kevmo! [singing] Kevmo! Kevmo! (Kevmo! Kevmo!) well a nyuk nyuk nyuk nyuk!

This is a pretty cool article. I'm definitely going to spend some time on this tonight.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[betty boop]

We think that the decay rates of elements are constant regardless of the ambient conditions (except in a few special cases where beta decay can be influenced by powerful electric fields).

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!

[sefarkas]

The values assigned to the decay-rate for particular isotopes are derived from laboratory experiments and statistical analyses of the raw data made available. Nuclear decay is not a deterministic (e.g., F=ma) type of phenomenon. It is a statistical estimate. Although there are many hypotheses about how matter acts at the atomic level, none have yet to be demonstrated to be comprehensive. I suspect that the variation in decay rate reported in this article is a simplistic way of describing statistical analysis results that have created a mean estimate that is several standard deviations (or other error measurement) away from the expected value(s).