The strange case of solar flares and radioactive elements

Stanford University ^ | August 23, 2010 | DAN STOBER

[Greysard]

It seems quite likely that some of these alpha and beta particles could whack into a radioactive isotope and cause an apparent increase in decay rate.

Those particles have minimal penetration - they can be stopped by a sheet of aluminum foil or by a sheet of paper. Any enclosure that physicists use for experiments (let alone the building where it is all installed) will shield the experiment from alpha and beta particles.

To explain the observed effect you need something that can't go through Earth (like neutrinos or gravity or magnetic fields) but can go through buildings or soil. Gamma rays could fit the bill, but we don't have much of them on Earth, and they are easy to detect.

[fruser1]

Problem with this is that the decay rate DECREASED before and during the flare.

[rlmorel]

Ahh. That makes sense.

[rlmorel]

It’s okay. We were just discussing how to get our town governments to buy us free vouchers for McDonald’s food. Come on in.

[zort]

If decay rates are not constant and can be changed by external influences then the dating methods based upon them are also suspect over very long periods of time.

On the contrary -- if there's anything to this (which I doubt), it would be a short-term effect that averages out over time (like the difference between "weather" and "climate").

[count-your-change]

The only way that the decay rates would average out over time would be if rates both increased and decreased randomly and that is not what was found.
Also to what degree these decay rates might be changed by external influences in the past is not known.

Using unchanging radioactive decay rates has been the basis of dating items of great age and if those rates are not constant and unchanging then the dating may be called into question. It appears that rate is not constant and unchanging under all conditions.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks decimon and ApplegateRanch! I didn't have the heart to look through the thread for some nutty misconceptions about radiocarbon dating.

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks decimon and ApplegateRanch!

Checking data collected at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island and the Federal Physical and Technical Institute in Germany, they came across something even more surprising: long-term observation of the decay rate of silicon-32 and radium-226 seemed to show a small seasonal variation. The decay rate was ever so slightly faster in winter than in summer... On Dec 13, 2006, the sun itself provided a crucial clue, when a solar flare sent a stream of particles and radiation toward Earth. Purdue nuclear engineer Jere Jenkins, while measuring the decay rate of manganese-54, a short-lived isotope used in medical diagnostics, noticed that the rate dropped slightly during the flare, a decrease that started about a day and a half before the flare.

That's what I'm talkin' about.

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[Monkey Face]

Radioactive elephants?

[SunkenCiv]

Oh, that wasn’t bad.

It’ll be worth studying how the natural particle accelerator (far bigger than anything we’re able to build) affects isotope half-lives across the board, and that would include C14. Still, the fluctuations in the *amount* of radiocarbon available will swamp any effect of this newly found kind.

[SunkenCiv]

Tusk, tusk.

[Monkey Face]

Was that truncated?

[LibWhacker]

But there's one rather large question left unanswered. No one knows how neutrinos could interact with radioactive materials to change their rate of decay.

"It doesn't make sense according to conventional ideas," Fischbach said. Jenkins whimsically added, "What we're suggesting is that something that doesn't really interact with anything is changing something that can't be changed."

Amazing! Thanks for the ping. It's going to be interesting to see what kind of explanation physicists come up with for this. In one fell swoop it seems to open a whole new way to study the neutrino, the weak force itself, and the center of the Sun! And if it's not the neutrino, it reveals the existence of a new particle (or better yet, a new force in nature) and gives physicists a way to study it! Very, very nice.

Now... How IN THE HELL can a neutrino mess with the nuclear weak force???

[LomanBill]

[noticed that the rate dropped slightly during the flare, ]

 

Interesting. 

 

But is the effect upon decay rate  caused by solar flares - OR - is there a common, unknown, condition which is conducive to increasing solar flares and decreasing decay rates?

[LomanBill]

[The decay rate was ever so slightly faster in winter than in summer.]

Is this true in both hemispheres?

[decimon]

Is this true in both hemispheres?

It looks like the observations made were all the US.

[SunkenCiv]

As the old saying almost goes, you have to eat a pachydermis before ya die.

[SunkenCiv]

:’) See my earlier reply to Peter.

[zort]

Will this finding increase or decrease Crevo argumentation? ;-)

It will certainly increase creationist argumentiveness, because everything -- science news, political news, fluctuations in the stock market, shifts in women's hemlines, whatever -- can somehow or other be interpreted as "evidence" that Darwin was all wrong.

It won't do squat for their credibility, however. ;-)

[grey_whiskers]

Cheers!